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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28348860">Out of Time</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/BairnSidhe/pseuds/BairnSidhe'>BairnSidhe</a>, <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ValkyriePhoenix/pseuds/ValkyriePhoenix'>ValkyriePhoenix</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Bodies-Verse Director's Cut [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Marvel Cinematic Universe</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(Seriously you need to read Bodies In Time first), Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Clint Barton Is The Adultier Adult, Crack, Ficlet Collection, Fluff, Human Disaster Clint Barton, Miscarriage, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Other, Outtakes, Spy Shenanigans, child characters, heavy au, mentions of EVIL</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 02:42:26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>63,183</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28348860</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/BairnSidhe/pseuds/BairnSidhe, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ValkyriePhoenix/pseuds/ValkyriePhoenix</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Not everything ended up in the Director's Cut.  Some things still totally happened.  These are those stories, now cleaned up and centralized for easier access.</p>
<p>Contains outtakes from the events between 1942 and 2011, things that happened during Bodies in Time but not 'on screen'.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Barney Barton/Laura Barton, Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes/Darcy Lewis/Steve Rogers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Bodies-Verse Director's Cut [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2032333</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>139</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>43</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Mad Jack</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hi, BairnSidhe here!  These works are an even collaboration between myself and Valky, which used to be divided between the BV series page and the Code Chartreuse series page.  Now Code and Bodies are one, and the works that weren't able to be fit into the long fics will be put into timeline coordinated fics in the same series so it's easier to read everything in the order intended.  This work is loosely chronological, but where we had to decide between topic and time, we grouped by topic.  There are also new shorts that have never been posted before, so even if you've read the BV, there should be something here to surprise you too.  As always, we welcome your comments and conversations.</p>
    </blockquote><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Meeting Mad Jack, the "Confusion To Your Enemy" guy.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>“Ach, yer heading the wrong way,” said a man on the road to Salerno.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I beg your pardon,” Monty said in the offended tone only he could manage.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And my pardon ye may have, if ye take my advice,” the man said.  Steve squinted at him, trying to place the familiar feeling.  “Yer heading towards the enemy lines.  Turn back the other way.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And how do you know enemy lines ain’t where we’re going?” Dugan asked with a smirk.  “We know what we’re doing.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Crazy Americans,” the man said with an eye roll, and both Monty and Jacques puffed up to complain.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Big talk, Mad Jack,” Steve said.  Everyone looked at him, the searching in their eyes asking a silent question… is this Darcy?  The man just stilled and gave him an appraising look.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Aye, and how’d ye be knowing that?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“My girl’s a big fan,” Steve said, letting his fondness for Darcy spill over his features.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I wasn’t aware I was even credited in those films,” Jack Churchill said, softening his posture.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You were in movies?” Steve asked.  Jack blinked and Steve shrugged.  “No, my girl is a big fan of the whole longbow and claymore in battle bit.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Wait, this is the confusion to your enemies guy?” Bucky asked.  “Steve, we have to get his autograph.  Wait, can we get… you know.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Steve poked the link, then shook his head.  She was sleeping and they shouldn’t disturb her for this.  But an autograph they could do.  Meanwhile, however, everyone else had loosened up and were happily chatting with Mad Jack Churchill, who seemed pleased but mildly confused.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What’s all this faff for?” he asked nobody in particular, and was cuffed on the shoulder by Dugan.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well the Lieu likes you, so you gotta be an okay sort.  She’s the best.”  He sighed.  “See, she’s got all of Cap’s fire and all of Sarge’s ice, she fights like Morita and she swears like Jones, she’s as crazy as Dernier and as classy as Monty.  Lieutenant Liberty is the best of us all.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And don’t forget, she’s got your people skills,” Morita said.  Given what Steve knew of their first meeting, that was a sign that their friendship had solidified into something you could call camaraderie but was likely closer to brotherhood.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If the lass was my girl, Captain, I’d be keen to keep this lot away,” Jack laughed, taking the notebook Steve passed him to sign.  “They seem to be smitten with her.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Darcy can take care of herself,” Bucky said.  “And she’d bite anyone who said she shouldn’t be friends with someone just ‘cause she’s got a man.  Heart as big as hers, it’d be a surprise if she didn’t take care of all of us, just ‘cause we’re here taking care of Steve.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dugan coughed, and then Jaques blushed and hit Dugan on the arm.  Monty and Jones had their pennies drop at the same time, based on the panicked looks both of them wore.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Get your minds out of the goddamn gutter,” Morita chided.  “You know damn well none of us are going to make it to the Lieu’s dance card.  If she finds out you just thought about it….  I won’t protect you when an angry sandan judoka decides to take her pound of flesh.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m starting to see why yer lady knows me for my sword and not my films,” Jack murmured to Steve.  “Good man, finding a wee Boudaccia to love.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You have no idea,” Steve said.  “Well, this was great, but we have an enemy outpost to hit.  Come on guys, Howard said he’d have a bottle of actual booze and a box of fresh strawberries for whoever managed to get the commanding officer’s underpants up the flagpole.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Question,” Dugan said.  “Can he be wearing them when we do?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I like how you think,” Jack said with a wicked gleam.  “I have to go retrieve my sword, otherwise I’d join you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Somewhere, Phillips is getting another ulcer,” Bucky remarked.  “That’s the start of a </span>
  <em>
    <span>beautiful</span>
  </em>
  <span> friendship.”</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Notes:<br/>Although not timeline consistent, this is somewhat based on a real event. Jack lost his sword in hand to hand combat in Molina, outside Salerno. When he went back to get it, he encountered a disoriented American patrol mistakenly walking towards enemy lines. The NCO of the local-verse group he bumped into refused to turn back, so Jack shrugged and said he wouldn't come back for a "bloody third time".</p><p>Jack was in The Thief of Baghdad and A Yank At Oxford, both un-credited roles.</p><p>&gt;&gt;“Somewhere, Phillips is getting another ulcer,” Bucky remarked.  “That’s the start of a beautiful friendship.”&lt;&lt;<br/>---Valky: I approve this message.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. God save the… Oh bloody Christ, hand me a wrench</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Howlies, Meet Lizzie.  World, meet CHAOS.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Darcy wasn’t entirely sure why she’d swapped with Steve.  They didn’t appear to be in immediate danger, the only problem was the stalled Jeep with the mechanic half under the hood.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Miss, if you’d like some help, I did work in a mechanic’s shop,” Bucky said and out of the hood popped an irate, grease smudged, VERY FAMILIAR face.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Bucky, shut up and let Liz work, she’s good with cars,” Darcy told him.  He looked at her odd.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And how do you know my name, good sir?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I read these crazy things called newspapers.  Also, I used to work in show biz, so no amount of engine schmutz on your face will make me not see the bone structure underneath.  It’s car oil, not contour make-up, and this is a war zone, not a stage.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And, oh Captain of the Americas, what do you intend to do about it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Prevent my Sarge from accidentally swallowing his own foot, and politely pass you wrenches.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I need a ¾ wrench, but the kit is missing it.  I was using a 4/5 but it keeps slipping.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Are you trying to use metric wrenches?  I ask, because that car was made in Detroit, where they use Standard.  Which is a fucking stupid system."  Darcy grinned when the only scandalized gasp came from Monty.  “What do you need wrenched?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That bolt, tighter.”  Darcy reached in and twisted.  Liz turned the key when Darcy was clear, but nothing happened.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I think everything in here is right,” Darcy said, looking at the engine.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It is, I don’t know what’s got into the beast.  Just died, I suppose.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She thought a bit.  “Unless the problem is in the ignition, in which case, I’ll help you hot-wire it and that should solve it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hot… wire?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Uh,” the other Howlies looked at her.  “American slang.  Start the car by by-passing the key ignitor and running straight to the wires that trigger the engine.  Method used by car thieves, stolen stuff is “hot” and you do it with wires, so hot-wiring.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Aren’t you some sort of bloody colonial jingo-boy, perfect American soldier?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ma’am, we in America are not in the business of making perfect people, soldiers or otherwise.  But we do make some good ones.  Please see my colleague in the bowler hat for reference.  By no means a perfect soldier, but indeed a very good man.  Do recall, we started our country off on the note of vandalism, theft, riots, looting and very angry people.  I think your family was slightly miffed about that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And that’s your legacy.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The legacy of my home, yes.  But Steve Rogers, artist and friend is as different from Captain America as Lizzie Windsor, mechanic and driver is from the Crown Princess of England.  Steve’s a dumb kid from Brooklyn, who never knew how to run away to save his skin if someone was being a bully, and he got his ass handed to him many a time.  Cap is the Sentinel of Liberty,” Darcy did the Wonder Woman pose and made her voice sound like a newsreel announcer.  Liz, the future Queen, laughed.  “But who is Lizzie?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“A girl who’s a little bit lost.  I can’t find the problem in the engine.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So we try hot-wiring it.  I’ll walk you through it, you have smaller hands, so just slide under the wheel….” Darcy walked the future monarch through hot-wiring a car while Steve watched beside her in her mind.  “Now touch the leads… yup, there you have it.  Buck, what’s our six looking like?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Incoming unknowns, far out, but gaining.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Everybody in the car, Lizzie, if you would be so kind as to floor it, I hate unexpected guests.  You would not believe how hard blood stains are to get out of carbon polymer mesh.  Someday I’m going to ask for a stain-guard coating thing.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Darcy would think that was the worst car ride of her life.  Until she met Dr. Jane Foster.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Origins of the Manual</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The SHIELD Field Manual started somewhere.</p><p>Namely with Peggy and Phillips with a bottle of rotgut and a need to stop people from copying the Howlies.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>“Well, that didn’t work.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Maybe a bigger hammer?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“There’s some in the truck, hand me one, would you? No, not that one, the </span>
  <em>
    <span>bigger </span>
  </em>
  <span>one. Bigger. Yeah, that one. Okay. Stand back.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Glasses clinked as Peggy stared at the closed door of their make-shift office this week. Howard filled three glasses as she and Colonel Phillips stared blankly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well,” Phillips began, “that was…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“An utter catastrophe,” Peggy finished, downing three fingers of whatever jet fuel Howard got his hands on this time.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How even?” Howard couldn’t figure out what he meant to ask and copied Carter’s example. He grimaced, no, not sipping this rotgut, it tasted like gasoline.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why do we let them out, again? Are they even trained?” Phillips griped.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Of course they are, Sir, </span>
  <em>
    <span>we</span>
  </em>
  <span> trained Rogers ourselves, and the others have extensive records praising their abilities.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They used a </span>
  <em>
    <span>sledgehammer </span>
  </em>
  <span>to disable a bomb,” Howard said in awed confusion.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And when that didn’t work, </span>
  <em>
    <span>they got a bigger one,”</span>
  </em>
  <span> Peggy agreed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How many times have they done something this preposterous now?” Phillips asked, pouring another round.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Peggy shot that one back, too, “I’ve lost count, honestly.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Someone else is bound to try it,” Howard pointed out, heartlessly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Peggy groaned and put her head down on the board-atop-crates that was pretending to be a desk, “Please, no. It will </span>
  <em>
    <span>not</span>
  </em>
  <span> work out well for anyone not as thrice-damned blessed with bloody </span>
  <em>
    <span>luck.</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Rules. We need a rulebook, of things we really shouldn’t have to say, but clearly do.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Put everything that lot does in it, preceded by the words ‘Do Not.’ Yes, I like that plan… except that it means having to reread all their previous reports, and I’m fairly sure I blanked those out for a </span>
  <em>
    <span>reason.</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I can help!” Howard cheerfully offered.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Peggy rolled her head to glare at him from the surface of the desk.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Howard. There’s a folder behind you. Red. Fairly thick. Grab it would you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alright. This one? What is this anyway?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>That</span>
  </em>
  <span> is how you can help,” Peggy answered with a saccharine smile, “It is, in fact, an itemized list I have kept running since we hit European soil. Of all the ways in which you, </span>
  <em>
    <span>personally,</span>
  </em>
  <span> have been a contributing factor to the numerous things that should not have worked.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“This is 47 pages long!” Howard protested.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Is it?  I feel like it ought to be longer.  I keep it so I can fill my hours fantasizing about hitting you over the head with it as stress relief.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Howard pressed his free hand to his chest, wounded. “And you want me to do what exactly?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Phillips grinned, “Come up with alternate actions you could have taken for each item on the list that would not have had the results it did.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll uh… get right on that then,” Howard pouted and left, slamming the door behind him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Peggy burst into snickers, and poured herself and Phillips another round. “That should keep him reasonably out of trouble for the next six months or so,” she grinned.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The door opened and Howard stormed back in, snatching the rest of the bottle, waving it back and forth to point at the two still sitting, “You’re both mean. Very mean. You can’t have any more of my top-quality rotgut. And you aren’t invited to my birthday party anymore.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Your birthday was last week,” Phillips pointed out drily, “And I wasn’t invited anyways.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well you’re </span>
  <em>
    <span>definitely </span>
  </em>
  <span>not invited to the next one,” Howard sniffed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The door shut, and Phillips joined Carter in laughter, drinking from their remaining glasses.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“This is truly awful rotgut. What’d they make it out of? Sewage?” Phillips asked, before draining the rest.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m sure he’ll find something better next time, Sir.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It kept Howard out of trouble, and catastrophic explosion free, for all of three months, breaking his record by nearly two days. Peggy reminded herself not to underestimate him. It did not, however, do anything to keep the rest of the Howlies out of trouble, and the collection of Rules grew ever longer.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Notes:<br/>The bit at the beginning is pulled from Valky's memory of a Steam Powered Giraffe skit from their first album.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. The Fair and Dossiers of Key Instigators</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The Fair is Tradition, but some folks just aren't Traditional.  Some are, but hearken to old traditions of tricksters and chaos and making their SO's cry with gibbering madness.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>The Fair</strong>
</p><p>
  <span>There are annual competitions at S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy to see who can most faithfully pull off the most bizarre Howlie war stunt with the least amount of injuries.  Currently, Phil Coulson is the judge for historical accuracy. The Annual Academy Howling Commando fair is a lot like a civil war reenactment crossed with Pennsic and given a dose of ketamine.  It's not officially condoned, but unless someone wins the That Is Not How Grenades Work trophy from the reigning champ, Fury ignores it, because he is damn proud of that trophy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The story behind his claiming of the trophy goes as such: when you go to any sort of job training that covers the use of a fire extinguisher, you will learn that you remove the pin that prevents the handle from moving, aim at the base of the fire, and then pull the handle. Also, there will most likely be some smartass loudly declaring “pull the pin...and throw.”  Unless, of course, you're at SHEILD Academy. They know better, because once, on a training mission, Fury actually threw a fire extinguisher in a firefight, taking some number of people out (accounts vary, but it was probably not more than 6... probably), with the weight of the extinguisher.  Later, in the same fight, he put out a fire with a grenade, using the concussive force to extinguish the fire.  This is how Fury won the That Is Not How Grenades Work trophy.  No one has been crazy enough to try it again, or attempt any other Not How You Grenade trick better than that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was also the first of Fury's reports to make it all the way to Peggy's desk. She head-desked repeatedly and then added it to the manual, and made sure to keep an eye on that recruit. In short, Fury is the Director now because he can out insane you.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Howling Commando Legacies attend the Fair every year, regardless of whether or not they're even SHIELD agents. Sharon Carter convinced the pilot of her quinjet to fly over the Academy on the way back from an op so that she could parachute out and make it on time. She had a broken arm and seventeen stitches in her head, but was pleased to defend her three year winning streak in Best Use of an Empty Pistol at Short Range.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tony Stark has been awarded the I Don't Think You Understand the Basic Principles of Physics engineering award seven different times, despite never having actually participated. Due to the Care And Keeping of Erratic Egomaniac Geniuses section of SHIELD's manual, inspired by Howard, Tony has not ever been informed, despite that being the ONE award he would show up on time and sober to receive.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <strong>Dossiers</strong>
</p><p>
  <span>Agent Clinton Francis Barton and Agent Natasha Ivanova Romanova:</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Clint is Peggy(and Fury)'s secret favorite because he keeps doing Howlie-worthy shit that either gets a place as an addendum to Howlie entries in the manual, or gets its own entry.  And because he does it at a rate even the Howlies would have been hard pressed to keep up with.  With the recruitment of Agent Clint Barton, new editions of the Manual had to be printed three and four times a year, where as early SHIELD only needed to print every other year or so.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Straight out of the Academy, Clint made the highest marks in the Most Deadly Application of Lipstick competition since Director Peggy Carter deigned to show up to "The Fair" in its third year.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then Natasha happens. (Agent Manual, 65th edition, section 1: What Not To Do, page 956: Do NOT drag the Russian Assassin home and ask the Director to let you keep it.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Natasha took one look at her probationary agent briefing packet and decided the manual was actually a check-list of things to do in the field when she's bored.  Bonus points if she does it with even more improbability-of-success ridiculousness.  She actually keeps score, and Coulson and Fury don't even TRY to tell her not to do things any more, and they don't let her have any copies of new editions of the Manual, because it just gives her Ideas.  She met the knowledge of the Fair with a calm nod that scared sensible people and proceeded to make her first real attempts at friendship outside Clint.  The SHIELD therapists were pleased at her progress, until someone showed them her entries in the Fair.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Natasha submits footage every year to the Dumbest Quip in the Face of Certain Death category. No one has any idea why she knows so many obscure references to eighties and nineties cult movies when she was raised as a Russian spy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Agent Phillip Coulson:</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The reason Phil is the judge of the Annual Academy Howling Commando Fair, of course, is not that he is a Cap Fanboy extraordinaire, no, no. It is because the very first competition he entered, he and his group did a perfect, historically accurate, recreation of a Howling Commandos raid to include the riding underneath the truck to get into the base and having the bomb you planted while under there go off 30 seconds after they got out from underneath the truck. This was the only time Coulson was allowed to participate as Peggy immediately made him the judge for all future competitions and walked away swearing under her breath about how stupid morons are </span>
  <em>
    <span>not allowed</span>
  </em>
  <span> to reincarnate. This is also the reason he was made Clint (and later Natasha's) handler. Nobody else could keep up with them. The Manual also has a specific entry that all of his antics gets lumped into. Technically, it is an addendum to the first entry of the Manual.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Item 1 reads thus: No agent is to attempt any stunt, shenanigan, or other activity they "heard Capt. Rogers did once" or any thing ever performed by any member of the Howling Commandos.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Item 1a: No agent is to attempt anything they "saw Agent Coulson do in a video once".</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Technically Phil should have gotten the "That's not how you use a grenade" trophy when he used a grenade to do a large concussive spot weld between a steel door and its frame. But he declined it on the grounds that an event judge cannot win any of the trophies at the event they are judging, as he did not want to upset Fury. (He was already trying to stay on Fury's good side because of Natasha's recent arrival)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Agent Melinda May:</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When anyone on the Bus asks Melinda May about her participation in The Fair, she looks them straight in the eye and asks in her best deadpan: "What fair?" But Melinda May ran stunt choreography for the infamous Coulson Re-enactment. She is also among the all-time top five of the "What Gravity?" plane landing competition and has more wins in the "Uh-huh, Yup, I'm Totally Juuuuuust A Secretary" category than anyone since Peggy. May has technically won many other awards, but for the same reason she does not care to be called "The Cavalry" she has never accepted most of them and they went to the runners up rather than bring it up. The only award she has accepted was Best Use of Awkward Silence and Raised Eyebrow in Interrogation. THAT, she is locked in a running competition with Natasha for. People feel proud to come in third, because those two take the top two slots every year. (She is also a frequent contender in the "Back Up Is On It's Way Does Not Mean 'In 0.2 Seconds'" category. Along with Romanoff, Rogers, Lewis, and Skye)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <span> Darcy Lewis:</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The ONLY person who is ever allowed to call the armory "Bloodbath and Beyond" is Darcy Lewis.  Agents with a clearance lower than 8 may not ask why.  Both Fury and Coulson get a tic in their eyes whenever they hear Darcy call it that, but Hill just ignores it and makes sure to have booze on hand for later. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her first year on SHIELD’s official radar, Darcy entered the "Dumb Quips in the Face of Certain Death" contest with security footage of being cornered by mercenaries in what appeared to be a closet on the Helicarrier, only to say "Welcome to Bloodbath and Beyond, how may I be of assistance in your death?" before hitting a hidden button, blind grabbing a shotgun from the compartment opened by the button and firing. It lost on the merit that she purposely lured them there, knowing of Agent Barton's "Boom-stick" stash, and was therefore not actually in the face of certain death.  Darcy maintains to this day that the certain death of her enemies is just as valid a time for dumb quips.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Next year a "Best in Show: Gloating" category was added.</span>
</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Notable Awards</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>A selection of notable awards, only some of which are limited to the Fair.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Additional credit to mouseymightymarvellous and quadrad for the original crackfic that donated to this.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>The “Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys (Just Keep Telling Yourself That, Sir.)” Award:</strong>
</p><p>There is a monthly division for officers commonly called “Not My Division.” It's actual name is “Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys (Just Keep Telling Yourself That, Sir.)” but some (silly) people thought the name too long. This award is a bottle of the good stuff and is given to the handler of the team that did the most outlandish thing in any given month. Colonel Phillips held the title for the first couple dozen rounds. Peggy, Fury, Sitwell, and Coulson have all also won it at one time or another. Mostly because Clint and Natasha, but also because of the Howlies and Fury (in Peggy's case) and Coulson (Peggy and Fury). Coulson has won the award 72 straight months. Because in Strike Team Delta, the "D" is for "deranged", "dangerous" and "dumbasses".</p><p>A push was made to change the "Not my circus, not my monkeys (keep telling yourself that sir)" award to the Bucky Barnes award but it was eventually decided that would become a separate award for being the sane person in a group or paring that endeavors, successfully if stressfully, to keep the other idiot(s) alive. Peggy held the title until she willingly (possibly gleefully) handed it over to Bobbi Morse, who held a five year championship during the time she was partnered to Clint, Pre-Natasha. After that it was Agent Hand, although nobody knew if "for keeping her partner alive against all reasonable odds" meant her agent partner, or Isabelle Hartly, her "nobody is asking and they aren't telling" partner.  Agent Hand passed it to Pepper Potts after the Mandarin attacks, and Pepper passed it to Bruce shortly after on the logic that technically Bruce was doing more of that these days than she was.</p><p>*** </p><p>
  <strong>The "Code Darcy" Award:</strong>
</p><p>The Code Darcy Award is handed out at the Annual Fair to whoever can do the most out of character thing, believably, in the field. Fury also holds this title. It involves Rocky Horror Picture Show cosplay in the middle of a mission. It was his idea. There was singing and dancing. In heels. 3 months after he was made Assistant Director. NO ONE EVER MENTIONS THE INCIDENT AGAIN. (But Peggy secretly has a recording that she keeps for when she has a bad day. The recording is made even better by Coulson’s rendition of Janet.) Coulson has also won annual trophies in it (though not the all-time championship) for :</p><p>* accurate impersonation of a Candy-Girl at a rave to avoid pursuit</p><p>* spontaneous drops into and out of giggly-i-love-yooooou drunk all over another (burly, male, straight-faced) Agent to avoid eavesdropping</p><p>*suggesting something Clint Would Do, before Clint could do it in a way that made it sound like he really thought it should be done....with the result that Clint Did Not Do The Thing.</p><p>Clint won an honorable mention of the award for berating a baby agent about taking unnecessary risks that caused the agent to get injured. Everyone watching had their jaws on the floor for a solid two minutes afterwards. It was only after watching both incidents back to back that it was decided by a panel consisting of Peggy, Phil and Jasper (Fury was excluded due to conflict of interest) decided that it did not top Fury's Rocky Horror incident.</p><p>***</p><p>
  <strong>The “...I NEED AN ADULTIER ADULT.” Award:</strong>
</p><p>Agent Harrow has kids. This is not particularly surprising as many agents have children, that's why there IS an employee day care center at HQ, but Agent Harrow has twin, three-year-old boys. Twin, three-year-old boys who regularly escape the day care, cause havoc, and then wind up in the Strike training gym. If Agent Harrow is on a mission, someone must corral the boys and get them back to day care. This usually falls to whichever agent(s) find(s) them. </p><p>One day, it fell to Agent Rollins. Only the boys fail to be cowed, caught, or cajoled. After half an hour, Rollins was horribly out of breath, the twins were still going, and Clint was in the rafters, laughing his ass off. Finally, Rollins threw himself down on the mats and declared "...I need an adult."</p><p>Barton called down "You ARE an adult!"</p><p>Rollins groaned, rolled over, and, flipping Clint off, yelled back "I NEED AN ADULTIER ADULT."</p><p>Clint jumped down, got the boys settled, and carried them off, one on his shoulders, one under his arm, both giggling wildly, back towards daycare in 30 seconds flat. The ribbing Rollins got was merciless, he never did live it down...but hey, he won a brand new award that year...</p><p>(Of course, so did the boys...)</p><p>***</p><p>
  <strong>Most Inappropriate Nickname, Code Name, or Other Designation for Foreign Dignitaries:</strong>
</p><p>The rule in the Manual reads thus:</p><p>"Agents are to remain aware that any member of any Royal family, Presidents, Ambassadors, and other Dignitaries, are to be addressed solely by their appropriate title. Nicknames are frowned on, even if the dignitary in question liked it.</p><p>Addendum A: Only the Senior Handler gets to pick Code Names for any dignitary under a protection detail, and Agents may not alter it because "He doesn't look like a Cosmos" or any similar excuse.</p><p>Addendum B: Agents are to be advised, even if you call them that at home, you may not use the slang name of any foreign dignitary to their face.</p><p>Addendum C: Yes, we also mean Doom's mask.</p><p>Addendum D: That does not mean 'say it to their ass.' "</p><p>This was included in the Manual's first edition when the ENTIRE 107th started calling the Crown Princess of England and the United Kingdom “Lizzy Windsor" after a Code Darcy. Within two decades, Addendum A was added after one Agent Lillian Morita started changing the code names on a mission in the Hunan Province of China, because she was irritated that people thought she passed as Chinese. Clint Barton's recruitment led to multiple cases of increasingly ridiculous nicknames and international incidents, resulting in Addendum's B through D.</p><p>Although many Agents have won this award, the undisputed holder of the ultimate championship, is surprisingly Phil Coulson, although his place as a judge makes him ineligible to accept. He has the unofficial title because he has multiple times, as the Senior Handler for Delta, chosen very odd and inappropriate Code Names, often letting the member of Delta who fucked up least on the last mission give suggestions.</p><p>***</p><p>
  <strong>The Improvised Cooking Award, also known as the “Iron Stomach Challenge”:</strong>
</p><p>It is a well-known fact that stake-outs are very long and very boring. It is also a well-known fact that the sadists down in Supplies take some form of unholy glee in giving Agents assigned to stake-outs the MOST BORING FOOD EVER. Yes, some may argue that the nutrition bars keep well and do not require cooking, but the fact remains that there is still some debate about the Geneva Convention and the Eighth Amendment (which bans cruel and unusual treatment) regarding Supply Officers.</p><p>This led to a few unfortunate cases wherein Agents left their posts in moments of weakness to acquire food that resembled food, and as a result windows of opportunity were missed. Needless to say, that went strictly against the Manual rulings about appropriate times to leave a position in the field. After Director Carter handed out KP duties and passed around her signature “You are all morons” death-glare, the agents most prone to food cravings began taking food ingredients with them. The Manual was updated on the topic of ‘improvised cooking’ in the wake of the entirety of Delta, with the exception of Agent Barton who can eat anything, getting food poisoning.</p><p>As the Competition is solely about times one has successfully violated the Manual, the next year had a new category. The first winner was Clint Barton, who shot down a bird of unknown species near the camp of a Colombian drug running ring, and chemically cooked it using a baggie of lemon juice and high-proof vodka. He filmed the entire thing and then added an Anthony Bordain-style voice over. He was unseated as the reigning champ the year Natasha Romanov entered, with her bizarre and unorthodox Rat a la Clothing Iron from a mission requiring a three week stay in a supremely sleazy motel. From then on, she and Melinda May continued to quietly attempt to one-up each other in terms of the least edible substances consumed on a mission, without horrible consequences. This was brought to an abrupt halt after Agent May had to have her appendix removed and traces of beetle carapace were found to be the cause of infection. She denies all of this, despite maintaining that as the last one to eat a patently inedible thing on a mission she did in fact beat Natasha.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. The Coffee Wars & Barton's a Better Adult Than You</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>A glimpse into the Behind the Scenes drama of an international agency of mystery.  (Aka, vague-yet-menacing government entities run on coffee like everyone else, and somehow Human Disaster Clint Barton is also the Adultier Adult.)</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>The Coffee Wars</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>There is no circumstance requiring any agent to replace anything with Folger's Instant coffee crystals “to see if anyone notices.” Particularly not while on SHIELD properties.</span>
  </em>
  <span> (68th Edition)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>SHIELD - despite having a big enough budget to pay for FLYING AIRCRAFT CARRIERS - is still a government agency. As such, the only coffee they have is STUPENDOUSLY BAD. You could force prisoners to drink the coffee available at SHIELD's break stations as a cruel and unusual form of torture. As such, Engineering builds a better coffee machine. Botany starts growing their own coffee plants. Chemistry figures out how to synthesize the best jet fuel. All of SCI-Div comes together to ensure that the various departments are well kept in the best coffee-flavored jet fuel. (This cooperation was the result of a plot enacted by a biochemist, a microbiologist and a bio-engineer whose cross-discipline projects kept getting bogged down due to feuds between departments. As a result, SCI-Div became significantly less combative over resources, in the fear that someone will take offense and pull out of the project.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When a specialist who's benched with a bad knee injury is co-opted to be a test subject for some medical research on tendon regeneration is in the lab one day, she manages to snag a cup of coffee when no one is paying much attention. It is significantly better than anything she has ever drank on any SHIELD base ever. Further investigation proves that the coffee across SCI-Div is magnitudes better than anything available to field officers. Checking in with a friend in procurement, they find out that there should be a limit on the amount of caffeine made available to any member of SCI-Div, as per the Stark Regulations. Following SCI-Div being reported to upper management and the ensuing coffee sting, SCI-Div is officially reprimanded and any and all caffeine products are removed from the labs.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And so the Coffee Wars began.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>No coffee was safe. Machines mysteriously broke. Coffee beans went missing, were replaced with instant coffee, were laced with hallucinogens. Coffee orders for upper management in important meetings were spilled, stolen, just plain wrong, and, in one notable occurrence, outright replaced with the same swill everyone else had been getting, simply poured into the cups that had been ordered. A three-months' supply of the sludge called 'coffee' the SCI-Div had been allowed prior to their OptimalCoffee project spontaneously took the place of gunpowder and other explosives all across the base. Grenades stopped working because they had all been filled with Folger's crystals.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>(Of course, at the same time, regular raids were occurring in the labs on illegal coffee speakeasies hidden inside repurposed storage closets and filing rooms and basements. A quinjet that somehow never was reintegrated into the fleet after sustaining heavy damage to the wing during a rescue op was found to be a popular mechanic and engineering coffee bar, the head engineer having simply "forgotten" to submit the paperwork that would have informed his superiors that all damage had been repaired.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finally, a cease-fire was called, wherein safe and sane caffeine limits were installed for all scientists, as long as field agents would bring gifts of coffee beans from whatever far-off local they had been blowing up the week previously upon any and all visits to a lab. The better coffee machine from the Optimal Coffee project was mass-produced and installed in all SHIELD employee lounges, but the jet fuel was banned.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Upper management never quite recovered from the horror of a six-hour meeting on implementing "In Case of Sex Pollen" protocols with nothing but decaf instant coffee made into pumpkin spice lattes that nobody ordered.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>---</span>
</p><p>
  <strong>Barton Is A Better Adult Than You:</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Laura Barton is Clint's sister-in-law who he looks out for because Barney is ...not that great a person so Clint (aside from conception) is basically those kids' Dad, and he does do the PTA Hot Dad routine whenever Laura needs support because Barney isn't around. He shows up, all model gorgeous (the Milan op really paid off) and convinces these moms he's the best ever and that if they hurt his sister he will be most upset and probably emotionally unable to make snicker-doodles for the Bake Sale. Laura never gets shit again. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>---</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Fuck! We suspect that a group of PTA moms are running a drug ring out of their school's parking lot. Who can we send undercover as a parent to infiltrate and bring them down?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Don't worry, Sitwell, Nat and I totally have this handled."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"You want to send Romanov undercover as a stay-at-home mom? She's an excellent undercover agent, but I don't know about this."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"What? No! Nat is my high-earning lawyer wife. I'll be the stay-at-home dad!"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"...Really, Barton?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I will have you know, I make a mean snickerdoodle and I have an excellent tolerance for wine coolers."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Barton shows up to first bake sale since “moving into town” in a pink polo shirt and flowered apron, gossips worse than the old-lady population of a small town, throws some truly superb backhanded comments about other PTA parents' hair, and walks off with That-Bitch-Shelly's recipe for cheesecake. Mission Completion Time: 18 days. The PTA mission blew the baby agents' minds. It was the fact that Clint could handle a diaper change on even the squirmiest baby that really had jaws dropping. Clint always shrugged it off by saying that kids of circus performers were the worst.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Clint is also a crazy math whiz, he has to be for his freaking JOB, but he acts so goofy nobody thinks maybe the basic math skill and unending patience of a sniper are ideal for such an Adult task as Taxes, and yet, Clint is basically the only agent who has never bribed the forensic accounting people to do his taxes. And Nat, because she bribes Clint.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>---</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Um, guys? Does anyone know how to do taxes?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I dunno, I get Karl down in accounting to do mine for me for a case of beer."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Don't worry, Junior Agent Matthews, I've got this."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Um, Agent Barton, sir, it's ok. I'll... I'll just get my mom on the phone."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Don't be ridiculous Matthews, taxes are my bitch."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Oh, no, sir, I really couldn't. Couldn't use up your valuable time!!! Hahahahah. ...pleasedon't."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"It's all good, Matthews, Nat just sent me your tax forms, hang on, this'll only take a sec."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Three hours later, a perfectly printed stack of tax documents, with the lovely arrow sticky notes indicating where to sign, shows up on JA Matthews desk, entire Junior Agent office pool screamed "WHHHATTT?" as JA Matthews fainted dead away. Barton cleaned out that month's Senior Agent Prank Pool, nearly $4k.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Lullabies</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The Red Room was not a place for compassion, softness, kindness, or love.  It was a place with children, who need all four.</p><p>Darcy will give it to them one way or another.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Reminder, you WILL need to read the Director's Cut Edition of Bodies in Time to fully understand this.  Characters and situations introduced there are not re-explained here, but do factor in quite heavily.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Darcy was tagged by Bucky in the late afternoon for help.  His connection felt thin, watery and echoing with a reverb like a mic held too far from his mouth.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Darcy, the kids are crying.  It’s Laynia’s turn on nights, but they sent her on a mission and I’ve been awake over seventy hours and I can’t see straight and the kids are crying.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I got it.  What lullabies are allowed?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It hasn’t come up yet.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>No time like the present,</span>
  </em>
  <span> she said with an ironic grin and let herself fall backwards into him, passing him with a feeling like a hug as he went to, hopefully, get a nap.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She blinked at the small child that had caused his consternation, a brilliant mop of ginger and chestnut over a pale face.  Beside her was a towheaded girl already losing the baby fat on her face was trying to wipe up the tears with the sleeve of her nightgown.  At least Laynia had talked the higher ups out of handcuffing them to the beds.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You want song?” she asked in shaky Russian.  The blonde shrunk back, but the red head nodded.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Darcy settled and sang the first thing that came to mind, from her Russian practice.  “Tili Tili Bom.  Close your eyes quickly.  Someone's walking by the window, and knocking at the door.  </span>
  <span>T</span>
  <span>ili Tili Bom.  Can you hear the birds through the night?  He's already made his way into the house for those who cannot sleep.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She walked Bucky’s flesh fingers along the bed, purposely exaggerating the ‘sneaking’ movement.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hear... his... steps.  He's... already…. Close!”  The girls giggled softly, the tears gone already, as she booped their noses.  “</span>
  <span>Tili Tili Bom.  Can you hear someone next to you?  Huddled in a corner with a penetrating gaze.  Tili Tili Bom.  The night will muffle everything.  He is sneaking up to you.  Now he almost got you….”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The blonde yawned, wrapping herself in her blanket and falling asleep like a blink.  No, like a soldier.  The red head looked up at Darcy and she felt her heart break.  “I’ve got you,” she whispered in English, brushing the girl’s hair behind an ear.  “Remember that.  I am close, I have eyes on you, and I have got you.  Now sleep.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>&lt;^&gt;</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Bucky tagged Darcy again for lullabies when the girls were a bit older, on his first wilderness excursion with them.  He was supposed to teach them woodland survival skills, and in his opinion, Darcy’s songs were a significant factor in surviving the War, which took place in woods, so he called her.  She giggled at him, and slid into the driver’s seat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Come my loves, I’ll tell you a tale.  Of boys and a girl and their love story.  And how she loved them oh so much, and all the charms they did possess.  This did happen once upon a time, and as such, was quite complex.  He saw and traveled the land she walked.  Looking out of her eyes, he became obsessed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Love is like a storybook story, but it’s as real as the feelings you feel.  It’s as real as the feelings you feel.”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>You’re the one with the charms,</span>
  </em>
  <span> Bucky told her.  She blushed hotly on his face, and kept singing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“This love was stronger than the powers so dark, that evil men could have within their keeping.  The spells were woven to steal a heart, but within his mind t’was only sleeping.  Love is like a storybook story, but it’s as real as the feelings you feel.  It’s as real as the feelings you feel.  They said don’t you know we love you oh so much, we’ll lay dying hearts at the foot of your dress?  She said don’t you know, a storybook love will always have a happy ending?  Then she swooped them up, just like in the books, and in her mind they could ride away.  Love is like a storybook story, but it’s as real as the feelings you feel.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That was in English,” said Vikitsa.  She’d made sure they all had names so she wouldn’t have to refer to them by hair color, or worse, their numbers, ever again.  “Should we be practicing English now?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span> “Only if you want to, Devochka,” Darcy said in Russian.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What was the purpose of the song then?” Veronika asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The world is cold, like this forest at night,” Darcy explained, switching back to English.  “Survival depends on finding warmth, like this fire.  It can take many forms.  Songs are a form of warmth in the coldness of the world.  Love, like the one the song speaks of or the love we can give to each other as a family, is a form of warmth.  Making your own choices can be warmth, like choosing which language you speak tonight.  I want you to survive, so I give you what warmth I can.  I sing this song to save your life.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>&lt;^&gt;</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Zurich was a clusterfuck.  Vikitsa got distracted by their target’s experiments and almost died. Bucky nearly broke under the strain of conditioning versus his love for their child, and Darcy was only able to say she succeeded by the narrowest of margins.  They didn’t die, and that was all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She sent Bucky to Jane and took watch over Vikitsa on the cold cargo train they’d managed to use as an escape route.  Vikitsa was trying to sleep, bless her, but she was silently whimpering.  She stilled as Darcy brushed her hair behind an ear, watching the golden light of sunset turning the dustmotes into fairies, and started to sing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Dancing bears, painted wings, things I almost remember.  And a song someone sings, once upon a December.  Someone holds me safe and warm, horses prance through a silver storm.  Figures dancing gracefully across my memory…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Your Russian is terrible,” Vikitsa said.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t sass your Mama,” Darcy retorted, tweaking her nose.  Then she froze.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s alright.  I knew,” her daughter said, and shifted to put her head in Darcy’s lap.  “Some of us pay attention.  Scientifically, it’s fascinating.  Personally… you have always been kind, and I owe you for that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You don’t, Vikitsa,” Darcy said firmly.  “Family takes care of its own, and there should be no debt there, unless it is the debt of a parent who fails their child.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They’re going to make you terminate me,” Vikitsa told her.  “I’m too much like Galya and Sima and Zozo.  I’m telling you so you don’t feel bad about it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Mmm,” Darcy said with a teasing smirk.  “It’s hard to kill someone who’s already dead.  We’ll be in Stuttgart soon.  Do a tuck and roll before we get there.  Go southwest to Dijon, then south to San Remy.  Find a man named Dernier, and tell him you aim to misbehave.  I’ll tell them you died on the train and I disposed of your body.  There’s certainly enough of your blood soaked into these pants to make it seem true.  Live free, Vikitsa.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>&lt;^&gt;</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They were taking Octobrina to her final mission.  They’d explained carefully to her what was expected, and what was to happen, and made sure she could repeat back the difference.  Brina was going to go in and seduce the target like she was supposed to, and a few others as had come to be expected.  The mission was then going to take a sharp detour from the briefing she’d been given by the Red Room as one of her targets decided to steal her for himself, and in the ensuing chaos, Brina would be shot.  What the Red Room didn’t know was that Laynia had already replaced their agent who would start the fight, and that Bucky had loaded special effect cartridges into his gun.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You know the signal?” Darcy asked again, checking Brina as Bucky checked his rifle.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Of course,” Brina said.  “You’ve sung it enough we would all know it by heart, even if you didn’t keep telling us you sang it to save our lives.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sing it again, just to be sure,” Darcy said, mainly focusing on the brittle edge in her daughter’s voice.  Distraction would help.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Take my love, take my land, take me where I cannot stand.  I don’t care, I’m still free, for you can’t take the sky from me.  Take me out into the black, tell them I’m not coming back.  You can burn the land or boil the seas, but you can’t take the sky from me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Darcy felt their heart catch in their chest as Brina sang the song on the stage in the seedy West Berlin cabaret.  The man Laynia had sent was older than she remembered, a scar cut his cheek that she didn’t recall, but he stood out like a burnished beacon in the crowd.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>As Bucky drew a line on Brina’s chest, Darcy mouthed the words “take care of her” to Gabe Jones, and she was certain he’d seen it.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Rather than have large chunks of dialogue needing translations, everything in this chapter is in English, but unless noted otherwise, everyone speaks or sings in Russian.</p><p>Galya, Sima, and Zozo are three Red Room girls cut for having kind personalities.  Vikitsa was going to be cut for being more interested in Science than Death or Spying.  Octobrina was cut for being "vain and high-maintenance"... aka having fully embraced the weaponized femininity and sexuality Red Room taught to the degree she couldn't turn it off.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Ships In the Night:</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Before the Avengers, there was HERO.<br/>Before Hawkeye, there was Clint.<br/>Before Nat-Nat, there was Natasha. Nathalie. Talia. Natka. Trainee Sixteen.</p>
<p>Before a lot of things, there was Budapest, and two people learning to fit their jagged edges together.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Yes, Ships is in here. Yes, there is new Ships content.<br/>We've also made the executive decision to merge chapters to make tying the arc together easier, so the chapters are now twice the length. Heads up, the Chartreuse arcs will be merged down to one chapter each, so Irkutsk events take one chapter rather than four.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <h3>Budapest, July, 1995</h3>
<p>Talia set her purse down deliberately on the bare kitchen table.  She hated her Budapest safe house, and that was why she was here.  Everyone knew she hated her Budapest safe house, so nobody would look there until she’d found her way to a new place.  The apartment was barren of all forms of decor, comfort, or signs of human habitation.</p>
<p>She carefully paced the perimeter of the main room, checked the cabinets with two fingers on the handles and a gun in her hand, and moved to secure the bathroom.  In the tiny, dirty, cracked tile room, she found something that nearly stopped her heart.</p>
<p>A napkin.</p>
<p>It was a paper napkin, the brown kind that comes with fast food orders, sitting in the trash bin.  Talia never in her life would have brought home anything that came from a place that gave out paper napkins.  She never would have brought home anything identifying.  Her safe house suddenly felt much less safe.</p>
<p>Kneeling, she lifted the crumpled paper with a pencil she’d tucked into her hair.  Unwrapping it, Talia held her heart in her throat, knowing a message might lay within, a message that she would no doubt hate.  As she pulled down the edges, a red smear caught her eye.   Far too bright to be blood , she thought to herself, and it doesn’t smell of poisons.  It smells like… tomato sauce.  Sure enough, the napkin’s printed logo told her it was from a pizzeria nearby, and the red stain was obviously from a slice that had an unfortunate brush with her bathroom floor, since there was also a large chunk of melted and solidified cheese in the discarded paper.</p>
<p>“Who breaks into someone’s home to eat pizza?  Who throws out only part of the slice that hits a floor this dirty?  And who in their <em> right mind </em> orders pizza with processed meat toppings in a neighborhood like this?”</p>
<p>She wasn’t getting any more answers crouching in her bathroom, so she stood and dropped the paper in the toilet to flush away any evidence.  She’d sleep with an extra gun tonight, and look into moving some funds around so she could cleanly set up a new safe house.  Maybe in Cyprus.  Nobody paid any attention to shady real estate deals in Cyprus, and there were plenty of Russian-speakers in Limassol for her to blend in with.</p>
<p>Late that night, a slight scuffing sound woke her.  Tucking her back-up pistol into her nightgown’s matching thigh holster and tying long, scarlet hair out of her face, Talia slipped on silent feet from her bedroom to the main room.  A figure was unpacking a case onto her kitchen counter, and she pulled her gun.</p>
<p>“What the hell are you doing in my apartment?” she demanded.</p>
<p>“Aww futz,” the man said, shoulders slumping.  “I thought it was vacant.  All my intel said you weren’t going to be back until next week, and here I am setting up a sniper nest to eliminate a terrorist target.  Talk about awkward.”</p>
<p>“Terrorist?  Which of my neighbors is a terrorist?”</p>
<p>“Zareh Kazarian, he heads the explosives division of the Armenian Mob in Europe, and he’s wanted for about seventeen different mass casualty bombings.  I’m here because he blew up a storefront that an undercover sting was launching out of and killed two agents.  They weren’t friends, but they were good people, and we don’t take death in the family well.”</p>
<p>Talia’s heart stuttered.  His dark tone when he talked about a death in the family reminded her of the good days with Zima.</p>
<p>“I will help you,” she decided.  “Kazarian takes reasonable anti-sniper precautions, but he finds me attractive.  It makes him sloppy.  Do you need him dead like a message or just dead?”</p>
<p>The man gaped.  “Woah.  Woah there, lady,” he protested, waving his hands.  “I can’t go involving a civilian!  It’s bad enough you came home in the middle of the operation, my bosses will have my head if I make you take the shot.”</p>
<p>“You make me do nothing,” Talia said abruptly, moving threateningly into his personal space.  “Nobody will ever make me do anything, ever again.  I can choose for myself.  Leave, before I make you leave.”</p>
<p>He left, which made her nod in satisfaction.  Smart man.</p>
<p>&lt;^&gt;</p>
<p>Clint sighed as he pulled the rolling golf bag that held the tools of his trade back to the safehouse.  Phil would not be happy about this.  He should never have trusted that intel on N. Rasputin’s schedule.  The new analyst was too chummy with the less than mature side of STRIKE, although he probably shouldn’t assume they purposefully passed him bad intel.  Bad intel right now could have gotten him shot.  It almost did .</p>
<p>“Hawkeye?”</p>
<p>“Hey Phil,” he said to his handler as he slumped into the room.</p>
<p>“You’re sort of down, did the nest setup not work?  I can call location operations if you need me to,” the older man offered.  Phil was good to him, treating Clint like a human being and not some sharp-shooting cryptid with magic bullet powers.</p>
<p>“I got seen,” Clint admitted.  “N. Rasputin?  The owner of the apartment they sent me to?  Came home early.”  He set his bag down carefully before turning to grab his stress darts and starting to hurl them viciously at the target he’d set up.  Maybe he should get several and try making each one have a letter.  He could spell out FUCK YOU OPERATIONS PLANNING.  No, that was too long.</p>
<p>“What?” Phil gaped.  “That can’t be right.  I only agreed to stay behind because you were only going to be going someplace nobody would be.”</p>
<p>“Phil,” Clint said cautiously.  “You have a broken wrist.  You shouldn’t be within five blocks of me while I work right now, you know I’m Collateral Damage Man.”</p>
<p>“That name is strictly forbidden and you know it,” Phil scolded him.  Clint sighed.  It was nice of his handler to try to make him feel better about himself, but he was a trouble magnet and made no excuses.  “I’m calling the ops planning team, this should not have happened.  A civilian getting in the way of an operation is unacceptable, and that’s on them.”</p>
<p>“I’m not sure she’s a civilian, sir,” Clint said quietly.  He knew Phil wasn’t mad at him.  He did, really, and even when Phil was mad at him, it wasn’t something to be scared of.  That didn’t stop the crawling fear running up his spine.  Fortunately, after the years they spent together, The tiny shift in his words and tone told Phil to cool it.</p>
<p>“Sorry Clint,” his handler said, “I should have asked.  What were your impressions?”  After the first time, when the apology set Clint off worse than the anger, Phil found ways around it.  Apologizing for something other than the anger worked well, usually.</p>
<p>“She was… hard.  Cold.  She’s been hurt too often, and she doesn’t trust easily, but she has someone she does trust.”</p>
<p>“Oh?”  It was all the prompt he needed.  Clint wasn’t like Phil, the answers coming to him in spools of information, linear and sensible.  He watched though.  Even if it came out jumbled, he did see things the other man missed.  And wasn’t it amazing his boss wanted to hear what he had to say?</p>
<p>“She was already there when I got there tonight, but she wasn’t there earlier.  She’s the kind of lady who sleeps in red silk and a thigh holster, they do not just stay someplace that’s already been breached.”</p>
<p>“I hesitate to ask, but… how do you know that?”</p>
<p>“Morse sleeps in black silk and a thigh holster.  There isn’t much difference except a redhead sleeping in red silk has a lot more faith in her lingerie maker,” Clint told him.  “Would Bobbi ever come home to see signs of a break in and then take a nap?”</p>
<p>“Only if she was far too tired to keep going, and she’d probably call for a back-up… which you think Ms. Rasputin did.”</p>
<p>“Maybe.  Either she did that, or she’s so used to having someone with her, that she forgot in a moment of weakness.  Bobbi wouldn’t, but Bobbi’s not the only silk-and-ammo lady we know.  Melinda also fits the bill, but she let Andy make her breakfast in bed.  Do you know how many tranq darts it would take to get Bobbi to let you wander around her kitchen and then come back in before waking up?”</p>
<p>“I’m very very certain I don’t want to know how you know this about Agent May.”</p>
<p>“We do brunch.  She can’t hold mimosas worth a damn,” Clint admitted.  “I’m not ashamed of gossip, sir, I like information.  That’s why I’m good at this job.  That, and the aim.”</p>
<p>“Fair enough, but we’ve wandered.  Why don’t you think Ms. Rasputin is a civilian?”</p>
<p>“Her stance with the gun, mostly.  And the custom matched negligee and thigh holster.  That’s… rather extreme kink for a woman alone, and I saw no signs of another human being in the apartment.  She could have had him tied up and gagged, but it seems unlikely a domme would allow a scene if the area was compromised.”</p>
<p>Well, there was one other thing.  He wasn’t sure if he should mention it.  He didn’t want this mess to spill onto her life more than it had to.</p>
<p>“Also… she offered to hit Kazarian for me, since she knew his schedule would be crap for a sniper.  Nobody thinks like that except… y’know.”</p>
<p>“Assassins,” Phil said.  He paused, weighing, and Clint watched him measure risk and reward.  “Do you think she’s a bad person?”</p>
<p>“No,” Clint said immediately.  “I trust her to choose well.  I don’t know why, but I do.”</p>
<p>“And I trust you,” Phil told him sincerely.</p>
<p>&lt;^&gt;</p>
<p>Phil Coulson did not believe in coincidences.  He’d survived quite well on not believing in coincidences.  Which was why he did not for one second think Zareh Kazarian had died of a heart attack caused by a long diet of rich food and rather enthusiastic sex with a beautiful woman.  He was willing to go with heart failure, the autopsy had been quietly shuffled off to a coroner who worked with SHIELD.  Considering the man’s tastes, sex was likely to have happened with the young lady who called in the report in tears.  Phil was very sure the mascara stained young lady with the burnished copper hair had something to do with Mister Kazarian dying, but he didn’t buy the natural causes line.  Especially when Clint took one look at the station footage and decided he was urgently needed basically anywhere else.  Phil loved the boy like family, but the twenty-four-year-old sometimes acted twelve when he liked a girl.  Given Clint’s fondness for women who could probably kill him with a cocktail napkin, and his description of being held at gunpoint, Phil was pretty sure the facial recognition would have come back as N. Rasputin who offered to take care of the Kazarian problem… if he had bothered to send it in.</p>
<p>Phil wasn’t dumb enough to pass up the chance to start recruitment on an asset like that, however.</p>
<p>Slipping up beside her, he pressed a card into her hand.  It had one phone number on it.</p>
<p>“If you want to come in,” he said.  “Since the weather is chilly here.”</p>
<p>“Thank you,” she said in return, palming the card like it hadn’t ever been.  “But I’m ready to try a little cool, fresh air.  I think I’ll go back-packing.  Travel without an itinerary and carry baggage with no handles.”</p>
<p>“Fair enough.  But if you change your mind about that…”</p>
<p>“I’ll keep it in mind.  I assume you know a heathen who eats down-rent salami?”</p>
<p>“Yes,” he told her, suppressing the laugh her description gave him.  “Although he also can’t get salmonella, botulism, trichinosis, or… well anything that would punish you for those eating habits.  He’s kind of a miracle modern science has yet to understand.”</p>
<p>She stiffened up, and Phil ran over the conversation for what might have triggered her.  “I swear, I only know because there have been cook-outs.  Everyone got sick, except him.  We still don’t know much of why, even his doctor just shrugged and said ‘epigenetics’.  I know you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, though.”</p>
<p>Ms. Rasputin relaxed fractionally.  “Well, just try to keep him from eating on the job again.  It’s sloppy, disgusting, and will get him in trouble.”</p>
<p>Phil nodded and moved on.  She was an enigma, no doubt.</p>
<hr/>
<p>
  <strong>Paris, February, 1996</strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Clint groaned.  It was raining again.  He hated rain.  It fucked up visibility and made his fifty kajillion former injuries ache.  It also had a tendency to make traditional bow strings lose their tension and become hard to use, although he hadn’t used anything less advanced than Kevlar strings since joining SHIELD and his current string was an experimental ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene that SciDiv swore would replace Dyneema some day.  That didn’t mean Clint didn’t still feel the wriggling tendril of anxious fear in his gut when humidity went up.</p>
<p>At least Paris was sort of pretty in the rain, the misty fog that rose from the pavement turning the ten thousand fireflies of the City of Light into a soft golden glow.  He remembered the first time he saw Paris, right after recruitment.  They’d put him on the Eiffel tower and he’d never before even realized what he was missing in tiny, podunk towns… he’d called the lights ‘fireflies’ over the comms and flinched, waiting for the sharp, mocking laughter or the belt.</p>
<p>Morse had chuckled and called him a romantic instead.</p>
<p>Maybe Paris was worth the rain.</p>
<p>Of course, Morse kicked him out after he tried to make Valentine’s Day plans to an aviary.  She was still touchy about her new call sign, and he’d thought that spending time with actual mockingbirds would help… but she wanted to do that on her own.  Which was fair, the relationship had hit the rocks before that with an ill-advised trip to a carnival that he’d reacted badly to.</p>
<p>“Hawkeye, I’m going to regret this, but can you please talk to me?  Your quiet is not a good sign,” Sitwell complained.</p>
<p>“It’s raining, I tend to be quiet when it rains,” Clint explained.  “I hate rain, and it makes me all mopey and philosophical.  I get the melancholic fits.  Maudlin.  Mawkish.”</p>
<p>“I changed my mind,” Sitwell grumbled into his stake-out coffee.  “I’m going to the corner for snacks, you’ve got this?”</p>
<p>“Yeah, I’m a dreary emotional wreck, not incapacitated.”  Sitwell waved at him dismissively as he hopped down out of the surveillance van.  “If I’m not parked here and haven’t called in, I’ve probably moved to keep the street sweeps happy.”</p>
<p>Sitwell wasn’t as much fun to go on missions with as Coulson, but then again, the two had different handler styles and he knew some people preferred Jasper’s business-like 9 to 5 sort of approach.  Clint didn’t.  He lived and breathed his job, and Phil knew it and treated it accordingly.  He made room in his life for Clint and the things Clint found important.  He’d even gotten Fury to help set up a safe house for Laura and the baby when Barney got arrested shortly after celebrating his impending fatherhood at a bar.  Which had also made everyone wonder why Laura wanted to make a baby with Barney to start with, but love isn’t logical.  </p>
<p>Sitwell was logical.  Jasper felt like if this was just a job to him it could, or maybe even should, be a job to everyone else.  Certain agents liked that.  It depersonalized things, as the PTSD handouts in the therapist's office called it.  Made it easier.  It just pissed Clint off.</p>
<p>He hummed off key to a song he’d heard in England, a surprisingly country sound that had floated out of a bar in the old city.  Their target was armed, dangerous, and remarkably dull to sit and watch.  He didn’t even know why they weren’t arresting her, she’d done enough shit to put her behind every set of bars there was.  Of course, with his eyes, only a super rush order on a serving of very dead could trump stakeout on such a notoriously wily target.  The lady had been running around since escaping a secure mental facility in the late fifties, for god’s sake, she may be getting up there but it’s not like it kept her from repeatedly ditching them.</p>
<p>“Fucking Whitney Frost,” he muttered, aware he was copying the Director Emeritus and her feelings toward the target.  Of course, just then he spotted movement.  Following in the van was out of the question, too noticeable.  “Damn,” he hissed, slipping out the back, leaving the map of the city on the seat where Jasper could know he followed on foot.</p>
<p>Slipping silently through the Paris night was child’s play, but the rain made it more difficult, and he heaved a sigh of relief when he stepped into the smoky jazz joint behind the sociopathic blonde with Maggia ties.  He felt a gun press his side and sighed.</p>
<p>“I got relieved too soon, didn’t I?”</p>
<p>“Yeah, youse sure did, pal,” said the man holding the gun.  As per fucking usual, life decided to turn dramatic irony on him, Clint thought.  He was being held up by a cliche!</p>
<p>&lt;^&gt;</p>
<p>Talia, now Nathalie, frowned into her wine.  An otherwise lovely vintage had been utterly ruined by the discrete packet of some form of drugs slipped into it.  Frost’s organization was promising, but sadly might not be worth attempting to take over and refurbish, especially with the cheesy pulp-noir aesthetic everyone seemed to embrace here.  Even their front was half jazz club and half what looked like a warehouse.  Which was too bad, when following the trail of breadcrumbs left by those who escaped before her, Whitney Frost, now called Madame Masque, showed up as a bright and shining star leading the way.  The first Red Room deserter had worked for Frost, as had the fifth, sixth, seventh and tenth.  Of course, she worked for the wrong side, but at least it was something better than running constantly.</p>
<p>Or so she’d thought.  Signs were pointing more and more to this being worse.</p>
<p>“Don’t like the wine?” Frost asked, her phoney baby-doll voice grating Nathalie’s nerves.</p>
<p>“I don’t often drink reds,” Nathalie lied.  Her cover story would attest to that, Nathalie Romain hardly drank at all.  “Too oaky usually.  But I didn’t come here to discuss wine.”</p>
<p>“Oh, dear, I was afraid this would happen again.  You Russian girls don’t know anything about having a good time.”  Nathalie tried not to grab a fork from her plate and stab the insufferable woman in the neck.  For better or worse, she was interrupted in her homicidal inclinations by the same assassin from Budapest last year being dragged in.</p>
<p>“Boss, found this one sneaking around.  You want I should get rid of him?” the cartoonish gangster in the pinstripe suit asked.  Nathalie shifted her grip on the stun gun hidden under her blousey tunic top.  She didn’t know why the man from SHIELD was there, but she didn’t want to see him dead.</p>
<p>“Oh, and who are you, you charming gentleman,” Frost cooed, her attempt at seduction pathetically transparent and also somewhat repulsive.  No woman her age, even one that slowed down her aging in her prime, should sound like that.  The breathy innocent voice belonged on an ingenue, not a middle aged diva.  A woman that age could be sexy, but only by embracing her own worldliness and experience, the cougar-effect, as Zima put it once.</p>
<p>“Clint Barton,” he bit out.  “Special agent, zero-seven-three-one-one-two-nine.”</p>
<p>“Oh, so formal,” Frost cooed again, but Nathalie could see the dozen tiny tells not hidden by the mask of sweet indifference.  “Come now, Clint.  You want to be on my side, trust me.”</p>
<p>“Clint Barton, special agent, zero-seven-three-one-one-two-nine,” he repeated, looking past Whitney Frost at the wall behind the two women.  Frost tilted her head, and Nathalie saw the faint edge of a frown peek through.  This man would get himself killed doing this.</p>
<p>“Ms. Frost,” she said casually.  “May I be permitted to take care of him?  I can’t hunt right now, as I’ve caught a small case of celebrity, you understand.”</p>
<p>“Ah, yes, I do remember how that goes,” Frost said airily, “such an inconvenience.  But we must face the challenges, mustn’t we?  Yes, my dear Nathalie. You may have him to play with.  Just remember to clean up after yourself.”</p>
<p>“Of course, Ms. Frost,” Nathalie agreed, standing to glide across the empty back room of the cafe.  She caught Barton by a shoulder strap of combat webbing.  “Come, you and I will have fun together.”</p>
<p>“No offence, Ma’am, but I highly doubt your idea of fun and mine are the same.”</p>
<p>“Oh, you <em> will </em> be enjoyable,” Nathalie told him, pulling him along behind her to the room Frost had given her for now.  The sound-proofing was terrible, but they’d make do.</p>
<p>She firmly sat him down on her bed and rattled the handcuff it had been generously equipped with.  Fortunately Zima had convinced the teachers that the cuffs weren’t necessary for his girls, but Nathalie recalled stories about classes that were full of girls who needed them.  When she was satisfied with the sounds of tying someone up, she held a finger to her lips and tried a short, jerky motion she recalled from Zima’s secret lessons.  One of safety and wariness.  Barton blinked and tried a sign in the complex hand language of the deaf.</p>
<p><em> How do you know that? </em>she signed back in shaky ASL.</p>
<p><em> I’m deaf </em>, he replied in slightly better RSL.   What are you doing here?</p>
<p>
  <em> Running.  I’m very, very wanted by many governments.  They want me dead or enslaved.  All I want is freedom. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em> You’re looking for freedom with a deranged gang leader? </em>
</p>
<p><em> I don’t love my options, I simply work within them, </em> Nathalie told him.   <em> She’s helped escaped Widows before. </em></p>
<p>He blinked at her owlishly, but quickly dismissed whatever thought had made him pause.   <em> If I agree to help you, will you get me out alive?  Preferably with her in handcuffs? </em></p>
<p>
  <em> If you agree not to tell anyone my location, I’ll help you.  I’d already decided she wasn’t safe enough. </em>
</p>
<p><em> Agreed, </em> he signed enthusiastically.   <em> Here’s the plan. </em></p>
<p>&lt;^&gt;</p>
<p>Whitney Frost was no idiot.  She knew Romain didn’t intend to join her.  She knew the woman had some separate issue that needed resolving that she couldn’t handle while in Whitney’s circle of friends.  She also knew that statistically speaking, the issues Black Widows had tended to die fairly quickly if the lethal beauties were given adequate support.  And who doesn’t love their supporter?  Love was so much stronger than hate when it came to binding together a family, which that dreadful Red Room had never grasped.  Whitney did, which was why her men followed her every word exactly; she made sure they loved her.</p>
<p>“Boss, I don’t know about that red-head,” Joseph said warily.  “She gives me the creeps.”</p>
<p>“Now, Joey,” Whitney soothed, “Nathalie has just come from a very trying experience.  We must give her time to find her way.  And when she has, she will remember who helped her, and one can always use another Widow.  The long game requires doing things we dislike, occasionally.”</p>
<p>“Alright, that’s why you’re the boss, Boss.”</p>
<p>“Good boy,” she purred, letting a drop of power slip seductive and golden from her fingertips onto his cheek, where it soaked in like water on a desert plane.  “You’re always so good.”</p>
<p>Standing, Whitney paced to her wall of influence, delicately tracing lines of thread and wire from picture to article to scrap of evidence.  This was the web in which she would finally catch Peggy Carter, the no-good chit who stole everything from her.  With Carter’s help, Stark would re-open the portal and she would join again with the zero matter, and now she was far stronger than Wilkes, it wouldn’t pass over her this time.  It loved her, the few remaining drips of it that kept her young and beautiful assured her of that.</p>
<p>“Whitney,” Calvin said gently.  “You’re scaring the help again, dear.  What have we said about not taking your medicine?”</p>
<p>“You don’t get to tell me what to do anymore, Calvin,” she hissed.  “Not since you left me.”</p>
<p>“I didn’t leave,” Calvin said coldly, “you murdered me.  You’re a pretty, blond monster, and you always were.”</p>
<p>“Well, now I’m strong enough to be a powerful monster,” she retorted.  “And that’s better than an impotent ghost!”</p>
<p>“Boss?” Joseph asked.  “Are you alright?  It’s gotten awfully quiet in Miss Romain’s room.  You want me an’ a few of the boys to check on her?”</p>
<p>“I’m perfectly, fine, Joseph, why do you ask?” Whitney replied, her smile stretching her face uncomfortably, but then again, beauty was pain.  “Oh, yes, we should make sure our guest has what she needs, but don’t send the boys.  They’re men!  A lady needs her private space.  I’ll go see that she’s doing well.”</p>
<p>Now, she knew what she was doing, and now she moved swiftly and confidently.  The warehouse certainly wasn’t the Ritz Carlton, but she could at least insure her guests had a nice time.  She knocked lightly on the door, calling out gayly to Nathalie.</p>
<p>“Nathalie, Darling, is everything alright in there?”</p>
<p>“Yes, just a moment Ms. Frost,” Nathalie yelled back shortly.  That cross behavior was unbecoming a lady!</p>
<p>“Nathalie, you are not in Russia anymore, we have manners here,” Whitney scolded.  The door opened, and Whitney took in the state her guest was in.  A form-fitting leather outfit hugged curves in inappropriate ways and the neat bun of earlier had been teased into a riot of random spirals held up with a thick black band.  “Oh, goodness no, this won’t do at all!  Come my dear, I’ll lend you a real gown, and we can brush your hair.  It’s so...vibrant, after all.  We wouldn’t want it all… disheveled.  What would the gentlemen think?”</p>
<p>Nathalie frowned, and stepped out to follow Whitney as the more mature woman spoke of fashion and movies and handsome men.  It was almost like having a little sister, not that Whitney had wanted a little sister, but every time one came to her she enjoyed it.</p>
<p>In the main meeting room, Nathalie stopped, under a skylight, which in turn halted Whitney.  “Nathalie?  You know we can’t have you change clothes here, don’t you?”</p>
<p>“I’m aware, Frost,” she said cold as her own arctic home.  “I’m also aware you need help and you’re not getting it here.”</p>
<p>“Oh, but Joseph does try his best, even if Calvin is nothing but a bother,” Whitney reassured.</p>
<p>“I’m not talking about your amnesiac lover or your dead husband,” Nathalie replied bluntly.  “You are not well.  You see and do things that make no sense, you cling to dreams long since dead and buried, and you haven’t changed how you dress or act since the fifties.  You’re ill, Whitney.  You’re ill and running from help.  Let me take you somewhere you can get better.”</p>
<p>Oh.  Oh no.  Not this, not from a Widow.  They’d always understood her need to find revenge on Carter and Stark and that colored bastard Wilkes.  They’d never called her dreams insanity, that was what Carter did.</p>
<p>Through tear-filled eyes, she saw the little British bitch in her stupid red hat standing behind Nathalie, manipulating her.  Her sweet little sister, now reaching behind her for a weapon.</p>
<p>“I won’t, I won’t let you join her!” Whitney screamed, tackling into Nathalie.  Strong arms embraced her and the earth left her feet.  Up, up, up they went, and when she relaxed into the strong arms around her, she was on the roof, being bound.</p>
<p>“Don’t hurt her, please,” Nathalie asked.  “She’s insane and dangerous, but she’s also helped smuggle my sisters to freedom.  My family owes her good care.”</p>
<p>“Of course I will Itsy Bitsy,” the man from earlier, Clint Barton, said blithely.  “Our orders are minimal contact unless she becomes a danger anyway, it won’t be hard to get Jasper to agree to giving her treatment instead of prison.  She’s safe.”</p>
<p>“And I owe you.  I’ll find a way to repay that red in my ledger, you have my word,” Nathalie said, vanishing as swiftly as she came.  Whitney whimpered as the man, now alone, spoke into a radio.</p>
<p>“Sitwell, we have a pick-up.”</p>
<p>“Barton, where the hell are you?”</p>
<p>“Murphy’s law loves me.  I’m on top of a warehouse full of sleeping goons with Madame Masque in a shirt that’s all sleeves.  She is, I mean, not me.  Can we get this going?  Paris rain is cold.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Translations:<br/>Come in (from the cold): spy-speak for joining or rejoining a group after being on a mission.<br/>Travel without an itinerary: not report in.<br/>Baggage with no handles: not take orders from a handler.<br/>Down-rent: cheap or badly made.<br/>Melancholic fits. Maudlin. Mawkish.: these are all synonyms for mopey and philosophical.<br/>Maggia: the Italian Mob of the Marvel comics.<br/>Murphy's Law: what can go wrong, will go wrong.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Notes:<br/>Nat has just escaped the Red Room, as a point of reference.</p>
<p>Clint is in HERO, but not fully read in to all the intel at this point. He can spot patterns, like the STRIKE team having guys that have frat-bro mentality and not officer of the law mentality, but he doesn't know who all is confirmed bad.</p>
<p>Collateral Damage Man was a code name banned by the Manual. See ValkyriePhoenix's works for more on that.</p>
<p>Both Phil and Clint have a lot of tricks for noting and coping with problems in psychology. Clint because it's a survival trait and Phil because he likes to know what makes some people tock when everyone else is ticking.</p>
<p>Clint dated Bobbi Morse, Mockingbird. Melinda May is at this juncture married to Andrew Garner.</p>
<p>Phil's off hand comment about Clint's miraculous iron stomach sets off Nat's human enhancement issues. It's not that, though, it's just that he's almost killed himself on toxic food so often that now his system just shrugs.</p>
<p>Clint has many thoughts on bowstrings. Traditional ones are made of natural fibers and get wrecked in too much humidity. Kevlar and Dyneema are higher tech materials that work best for professional archers or ones with expert skill. Ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene is a subset of the futuristic tech that bowstrings are looking at now.</p>
<p>Whitney Frost appeared in Season 2 of Agent Carter. She's been confirmed as the MCU version of Madame Masque, and I'm keeping her young(ish) in this by way of the handwavey effect of having the superscience gunk called Zero Matter in her once. She's a brilliant scientist and more than a little batshit. Her POV is a VERY unreliable narrator.</p>
<p>Whitney Frost recruited "Dottie Underwood" the Widow of Peggy's era. I'm spitballing and saying that escaped Widows from her batch often used the trail blazed by Dottie as an underground railroad of sorts.</p>
<p>As Trainee Sixteen, Nat received training in military handsign. As Natka, Zima's daughter, she also learned the Howlie specific codes that are used by HERO. American and Russian sign languages were also taught to the girls.</p>
<p>"Joey" is Joseph Manfredi, the MCU mobster who loved Whitney Frost. I'm making him a Hammerhead counterpart, and as such at this juncture has amnesia. "Calvin" is the delusion of Whitney's husband who acts like her conscience. Not that she listens.</p>
<p>Whitney specifically hates Jason Wilkes for being 'favored' by Zero Matter. She's going to use horrid language because one, she hasn't had a reality check since the 50's, and two, she's evil and she hates him.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Ships in the Night: 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>Budapest, July, 1996</strong>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Natasha shook her head.  She was insane, that was the only explanation.  The Red Room had broken her mind in ways she couldn’t even fathom, or else trained her to default to suicidally reckless behavior after a year out of their control.  But something was fundamentally wrong with her.</p>
<p>Why else would she have come back to Budapest on a stupid, pointless, sentimental mission?</p>
<p>Sighing, she flipped her lock picks out and opened the door.  Inside, she set her burden down on the dusty floor of the empty safe house she’d discarded in her search for a new life.  Beside it, she folded into a cross-legged seat.  Breathing in deeply, she caught the scents of tomato, garlic, cheese and meats…. Wait, meats?</p>
<p>Her eyes flew open to the man from before ducking in the fire escape entrance with a box of his own.</p>
<p>“Well, futz.  This place was supposed to be abandoned,” he said, echoing his statement exactly one year ago.</p>
<p>“And which of my neighbors is a terrorist this time?” she asked.</p>
<p>He snorted.  “You, I like.  You’re funny.  I’m on vacation, actually.”</p>
<p>“Do you often break into empty apartments with pizza while on vacation?” she asked, genuinely interested.  He was a puzzle she had yet to solve, which was rare.</p>
<p>“No,” he admitted, blushing.  “I’m not usually even out of the States for my vacations.  But when I saw my schedule was free this week… let’s say you leave an impression.”</p>
<p>“My own stalker,” she said dryly, “I’m such a lucky, lucky girl.  Although usually the impressions I leave are a bit more… literal.  And less likely to encourage obsession.”</p>
<p>“It’s not an obsession, Miss Nathalie Rasputin or whatever you’re going by now.  And I’m not stalking you, I had no idea you’d ever come back here.  It seemed like the kind of sloppy and dangerous thing I’d do, not the sort of thing you approve of.”</p>
<p>Natasha nodded.  “I thought I was going insane, to feel the need to come back.  It’s not much, and I always hated it, but this was the first place I decided anything on my own.  Right there in the kitchen, I decided to go finish your job.”</p>
<p>“You were here on a Russian mission?” Clint asked her, curious.</p>
<p>“No, I was running away.  I’d already ditched my handler in Odessa,” she admitted, feeling drunk and wishing she could blame it on the unopened bottle of wine in her basket.</p>
<p>“So didn’t you make your first decision in Odessa?”  It was a reasonable assumption, but wrong.  Part of her wanted to smile enigmatically and flirt her way to his bed, to distract him from that line of thought.  Part of her wanted to kill him for uncovering this weakness in her.  Most of her was tired of running.</p>
<p>“No.  That decision was made for me.  By someone I trust to want the best for me, but still, someone else.  I got to Budapest on my own, I can plan, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do.  You helped me decide, actually.”</p>
<p>“And what is it you want to do?” he asked around a bite of congealed grease and polluted meat.  She wrinkled her nose.  “Besides mock the great institution of pepperoni pizza?”</p>
<p>“I’m not sure that is pepperoni.  It smells like when I had to eat rats in Guam.  And I decided,” she continued, cutting off his squawked protest, “that I want to hurt the people who break families, who turn something pure into something painful.”</p>
<p>He broke into a big smile, and it warmed her in ways she’d never known before.  “Aww, you want to fight for love and justice.  That is so very Sailor Moon of you.  So do you have a family?  It seems like a specific motive, and you referred to sisters in Paris.”</p>
<p>“I owe a debt, that’s all,” she told him bluntly.  “I can’t help Zima, so I’ll help those he can’t.  He’d like that for me.”</p>
<p>They sat in companionable silence for a bit.  Natasha could see the wheels spinning behind the purple curve of a hearing aide.  He’d figure it all out, if he kept asking smart questions and she kept answering honestly.  It never occurred to her to lie, though.  It seemed somehow forbidden in the dark, dusty apartment, moonlight turning dust motes into shafts of floating silver.</p>
<p>“Was Zima your lover?” he asked, and Natasha pulled a disgusted face.  She’d never been that sort of pervert, not like Yelena, although that thought made her heart hurt.  “Guess not.”</p>
<p>“Love is…” she struggled to find the words to describe how out of reach that feeling was for her now.  “Love is for <em> children </em>.”</p>
<p>He looked like he’d been slapped. She wished she could pull back the words, but they floated there, hanging among the dust motes and the moonlight, tarnishing the bright silver of the moment.  “Clint… I…”</p>
<p>“No, no, it’s alright.  I’m just shocked to meet someone with as bad a childhood as I had.  We’re kinda rare is all.”</p>
<p>“Slava Bogu,” she agreed, pulling out the wine bottle.  “I can drink to that.”</p>
<p>Clint smiled and stood to get glasses from the cupboards.</p>
<p>&lt;^&gt;</p>
<p>He watched her pour the wine, a rich smelling merlot, whose color danced in rainbows at the edge of the glass tumblers he’d found in place of real wine glasses.  She was elegant and refined, even pouring wine into the wrong glass to drink sitting on the dirty floor of a mostly-empty apartment.  He blinked back a memory of drinking box wine from red solo cups with Bobbi in the back of some rinky-dink motel while they waited for a clean-up crew.  His roller coaster of a dating history wasn’t what he wanted to be thinking of.</p>
<p>“A toast,” she said, raising the cup in her hand.  "Budem zdorovy!"</p>
<p>“Bud-- budem zedro… eh, cheers!” he replied, clinking her glass.</p>
<p>“You are terrible at speaking Russian,” she commented after emptying her cup.</p>
<p>“I have a secret shame,” Clint admitted with a smirk.  “I have a bit of state-dependant memory associated with what Russian I do know.  I can only speak it if I’m drunk.  I can always understand it if it involves words I know, but speaking?  Only like three glasses in.”</p>
<p>“Oh, so you speak like a native, then?” she teased, and his breath caught as her hair fell back from a laughing face that was suddenly years lighter.  “Go on, you pick the second.”</p>
<p>“To the nights we won’t remember and the friends we can’t forget,” he said, choosing a common toast at SHIELD.  The circus hadn’t really instilled anything resembling common table etiquette, so he tended to copy from others.  She chuckled while topping off the glasses, at least, so there was that.</p>
<p>“Vsem tem, komu ne povezlo,” she toasted, and Clint put his cup down suddenly.</p>
<p>“I need to know how you meant that, first,” he said when she looked at him.  He knew his voice was sharp, but there are lines he didn’t cross, nor let others cross.</p>
<p>“I meant, let us drink to the poor souls who weren’t as lucky.  How else can that be meant?” she demanded.  “The third toast is to the dead, or the lost, or the forgotten.  Always.  It’s to the ones who can’t be here.”</p>
<p>Clint sighed.  “Sorry, I just… you aren’t military, so I got nervous.  That one is…”</p>
<p>“I know,” she said.  “What about, to absent friends?”</p>
<p>“And may we be absent less than present,” he agreed.</p>
<p>“Mne ochen' zhal' ptitsu, let’s not think like that.  We’ve still got half a bottle, let’s drink to Budapest.  He we met, here we re-met, here may we meet again.”</p>
<p>“You have a liver of iron,” he commented as she drained her fourth glass.  “I’m going to drink to your health, you’ll need it if you keep chugging this stuff.”</p>
<p>“You western men are weak,” she said with fondness.  “You haven’t even finished two whole cups yet.  Come on, do dna, bottoms up.”</p>
<p>“I think you’re trying to get me drunk,” he said, half teasing, scowling into his glass, which he’d carefully monitored through drinking and refilling.  He couldn’t really afford to go too far with it, but he could probably get through one more glass.  “Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to tempt a recovering alcoholic?”</p>
<p>“Oh,” she said, perfectly colored red lips forming a perfect ‘o’ of surprise.  “You hide that very well.  I guess I can finish the bottle, it’s not like I wasn’t planning to drink it on my own when I bought it.  What shall I drink to?”</p>
<p>Clint thought, and snagged one from when they had a Russian strongman in the carnival.  “Za nashikh prekrasnykh tsarits!”</p>
<p>“You’ll start to gather flies,” she said with a moue of distaste, “if you keep spilling all that honey everywhere.  And there’s only one woman here.”</p>
<p>“I didn’t say women, now did I?” Clint countered.  “Am I not also allowed to be a queen?  I rock the drag looks, I’ll have you know.”  </p>
<p>She laughed and he called it good.</p>
<p>&lt;^&gt;</p>
<p>Laura Barton tapped her foot impatiently as she waited for Clint to pick up.  Or rather his voicemail to take the call again.  And because he was a dick, his voicemail had no message, leaving her to wait silently for the beep and click that signalled recording.</p>
<p>“Clinton Francis Barton,” she screamed, the second the line took up.  “I swear to little baby Jesus if you do not come home the instant you get this, I am naming this baby Quintin.”</p>
<p>“Don’t do that to an innocent,” a sweet, feminine voice told her.  “What did the detka ever do to you?”</p>
<p>“Who is this, and why do you have Clint’s phone?” Laura demanded, her gut suddenly cold from fear.  Clint was her land-line in all this, the one who got her declared legally his next of kin so she could draw his government insurance, the one who took her to doctor’s visits and lamaze classes and generally acted like the dad-to-be that his no good brother should have been.  But Clint, for all his stability, had a dangerous job and she knew it.</p>
<p>“Relax, Molodaya Mat', I’m no threat to you.  I’m just a friend.  He estimated his tolerance for Russian wine wrong, though and is currently very good friends with my toilet.  Can I pass him a message?”</p>
<p>Laura sighed and let herself return to normal as the baby kicked her bladder again.  “I need him to come home, I’m not… something is going wrong and the nearest hospital is an hour and a half of dirt roads away.  I can’t do this alone.”</p>
<p>The Russian woman said nothing and Laura began to cry.</p>
<p>“Hold on, moya sladkaya ptitsa,” she finally said.  “He’s coming.  Call your emergency services, but he’ll be there.”</p>
<p>Five hours later, Clint ran into Laura’s hospital room, wild eyed and frantic.</p>
<p>“Sir,” one of the doctors said, “you can’t go in there unless you’re the father.”</p>
<p>“That’s my sister, you bag of moldy dicks,” Clint swore.  “I’m going in there.”</p>
<p>A slim redhead grabbed the protesting doctor by the shoulder and Laura could see him go pasty as pale fingers squeezed.  “We will let the family be together now, da?” she said, in no way implying it was a question.</p>
<p>“Laura, what the hell happened?” Clint asked, and Laura forgot the drama outside.</p>
<p>“Preeclampsia, a blood pressure problem,” she started, her voice thin.  “They don’t know if he’ll make it, since they had to induce early.  I’m sorry you weren’t here, I could have used the coaching.”</p>
<p>“Laura, if I’d known you were going to go into labor, I never would have gone overseas.  I promise we will get through this.”</p>
<p>“I know, Clint… and I don’t blame you, who would have thought I’d be giving birth at seven and a half months?”</p>
<p>“You are a fairly impatient woman,” he teased, and she swatted him.  “What do you need?”</p>
<p>“Distract me.  Who’s the hottie with the red hair?”</p>
<p>“Oh, that’s Nat… wait, where’d she go?” he asked, looking around.  “Damn woman is like Cinderella in better fitting footwear.”</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<h2>Lima, April, 1997</h2>
<p>“We have got to stop meeting like this,” the man in the balaclava said to the woman in the shimmery gold pashmina.  “People will talk.”</p>
<p>“People always talk,” she replied, dropping to her knees in her flowing sundress to work the catch on the magazine of her gun.  “I’m out.”</p>
<p>He tossed her a fresh clip, which she caught as the old one hit the ground.  He covered her as she reloaded, only to duck down as she stood and resumed firing.  Behind them, a Japanese diplomat quietly assumed they’d been partners for years.  He wasn’t so much wrong, as he was taking the truth out of context, but the two fighters standing at 45 degree angles to each other, effectively covering each other and their charge, didn’t mind.  They would’ve probably agreed with his assessment.</p>
<p>“There’s a safe house two blocks from here,” the woman told the men.  One paused his fire to listen, and one leaned into the fear that had become his closest companion.  “Follow me.”</p>
<p>“What are you waiting for?” the man in the balaclava chided the diplomat as the exhausted and worn-thin courage of rescue finally started to snap.  One suit covered arm was taken in a strong hand wearing an archer’s glove.  “Let’s go!”</p>
<p>Through the streets of Lima, the fire color of the woman’s hair where strands have pulled free from her scarf danced like a guiding flame.  She darted past danger and flaunted herself to buy them a few more unseen steps, a careful game of cat and mouse.  The diplomat was a poetic soul and in that moment he thought of the legends of Kitsune, beautiful women who were secretly fox spirits.</p>
<p>Were he more given to practicality, he might have recalled that foxes are carnivores.</p>
<p>They rounded a corner and the scouts for the MRTA called to their friends.  The man shoved the diplomat into a door and the woman grabbed the man’s jacket and pulled the knit of his face mask down around his neck.  They pulled together for a short, passionate kiss that reminded the diplomat to call both his wife and his mistress when he was safe.  A scout scoffed loudly.</p>
<p>“Son sólo amantes. Estás paranoico y loco.”  The group moved on.</p>
<p>“Wow, that was… what was that?” the man said, as he hesitated to pull his mask back on, and she rearranged the pashmina to show an icy violet color instead of gold.</p>
<p>“A kiss.  You really did have a deprived life.  At least I learned what kissing was.”</p>
<p>“Well, yes it was a kiss, but… why did you kiss me?”</p>
<p>“Public displays of affection make people uncomfortable,” she shrugged.  “We needed to lose a potential tail.  Really, Yastreb, this is counter-surveillance 101.  Did you hit your head again?”</p>
<p>“No!” the man insisted hotly.  “Well… I’m totally clear for active duty anyway.”</p>
<p>“I see,” she said coolly as they step out into the street again.  Her gun came up as she checked her sight paths.  “Are you completely clear by your standards, Medical’s standards, Coulson’s standards, or my standards?”</p>
<p>“Medical’s,” he grumbled.  “But I’m clear for ground work by Coulson’s standards.”</p>
<p>“Why do I bother trying to keep you alive?” she asked nobody in particular.</p>
<p>&lt;^&gt;</p>
<p>Fury was pacing, and Clint knew that was not a good thing.</p>
<p>“Do you care to tell me who exactly this is?” the Director asked, tossing the file down, open to a picture of Nat standing with her back to Clint’s as they clear a hallway.   <em> The quality of the security footage sucks, </em> Clint thought.</p>
<p>“Well, sir, I’m under the impression that we’re supposed to neither confirm nor deny the existence of Bigfoot….”</p>
<p>“Stop being a smartass for one damn debrief, Barton,” Fury snarled, but it had the quality of a plea.  “Who is the operative who assisted you during the Lima extraction?</p>
<p>Clint glanced at the camera and Fury slapped the desk sharply, which turned the red recording light off.</p>
<p>“She’s a friend, she doesn’t like people who hurt families.  She tends to save my life a lot, and I think she’d be a good recruit sir.  She’s got skills, years of training in one of the best assassin factories of the Soviet Union, motive to help us, and she needs a home.  It’s a perfect win-win if we can get her into HERO.”</p>
<p>Fury blinked.  “Hero?  Barton…”</p>
<p>“Sir, I know you’re in it too.  You hired me for my eyesight, remember?”</p>
<p>“I hired you because it was that or build a better Super-Max and I don’t have clout yet to approve that kind of budget.  If you can bring her in, do it, if not… make the best call you can.”</p>
<p>Clint nodded as the light came back on. “I understand Sir, sorry Sir, won’t happen again Sir.”</p>
<p>“Get outta my damn interview room, Barton,” Fury said, scowling.  “And report to Medical, you walking disaster!”</p>
<p>“Hey, Barton,” a voice said.  Clint turned and nodded to Brock.  “Heard Fury was pretty pissed you used a civilian for cover down in Lima.”</p>
<p>“She’s not a civilian,” Clint told him, carefully choosing his words.  He didn’t know for certain if Rumlow was Hydra, but he definitely wasn’t with HERO.  “She’s more of an independent asset I know.  And I know her, if I’d tried to do that mission without letting her play and got shot, which seems likely, the next time I saw her I’d never escape a blanket fort cuddle session.  She gets like that after a certain amount of worry and booze.”</p>
<p>“Heh,” Rumlow snorted.  “I wouldn’t mind cuddling with her myself.”</p>
<p>“I didn’t know you were in Lima,” Clint said almost casually.  “I would have introduced you two.”</p>
<p>“Oh, I wasn’t,” Brock said with too much jovial cheer.  “I saw the tape they pulled, that’s all.  Real looker, your friend.”</p>
<p>Clint smiled, but the math in his head kept going two plus two equals banana.  The best picture Fury could show him to ask for an ID was bad enough that they could probably use it on a conspiracy theory website to cast doubt on reports of SHIELD involvement in the Japanese Embassy Crisis.  “I’ll tell her you said so,” he promised, thinking of how paranoid Nat could be and how grateful she’d seemed when he flat out told her where his biases lay.  She would appreciate the heads up.</p>
<p>&lt;^&gt;</p>
<p>“You went off mission, Romanova,” her employer of the moment chided.  “I hired you because you billed yourself as a professional.”</p>
<p>“I got your job done,” Natasha spat.  She despised double dealers.  Unless she was taking them for every cent and every secret they had, of course.  The greedy were so easy to scam it was almost sad.  “I do the job.  I get paid.  That’s what a professional is.”</p>
<p>“You were seen consorting with an agent of the law,” the middle man growled.  “That doesn’t inspire much confidence in your discretion, and my employer wants to ensure secrecy.  I’m sorry, Miss Romanova, but as they say in Russia, do svidaniya.”</p>
<p>She sighed as the gun came out, and slid into a defensive stance as it took aim.  Her body flowed, like a river or a silk scarf snapping in the breeze.  Her grace was trained, taught, drilled and drummed into every inch of her childhood; it wasn’t something innate, but it was the next best thing as she avoided the shots and closed in on the shooter.  His hand broke easily enough in her grip, his arm ripped free from it’s socket in a satisfying pop as her legs twisted him to the floor.  He coughed a laugh and let a small cylinder drop from his fingers.  She grabbed it and threw it in the canal they’d met beside, the water would buy them time before the following explosion could kill them.</p>
<p>Her nails left red gouges on his arm as she dragged him away from the meeting place.  He was out of it, rambling through the pain, but she wasn’t going to leave him to die.  Not because she cared, because she needed to pass on a message.  Luckily, waterproof makeup works on the body too, because soon, her message was picked out in purple eyeliner.</p>
<p>TURN TURN TURN</p>
<p>YOU TURN ON ME</p>
<p>I’LL TURN ON YOU</p>
<p>TURN THE GLASS</p>
<p>AND START RUNNING</p>
<p>She sacrificed a half dead lip-liner to the cause, drawing a red hourglass, sand filtering slowly to the bottom, a spider’s web in black lines of liquid kohl behind it.  He sighed and the air whistled brokenly through half-clenched teeth.</p>
<p>“You should know better than to try to pay me in lead when I bartered for silver,” she told him disdainfully.  “I’m still Russian, after all.  I don’t have much patience for that.”</p>
<p>“May God and the Devil both turn their backs and you wander forever,” he spat.</p>
<p>“Lord, throw some brains from the heavens,” she countered, wiping her hands on an antiseptic cloth.  “Or stones, as long as you don’t miss.”</p>
<p>She was getting tired of this life, of the running and the backstabbing and never knowing who she could trust.  Not for the first time, she looked back on the offer to come in from the cold with a kernel of regret.  But the offer had likely faded, and her history didn’t inspire much faith in the hearts of good people, and acceptance of that history didn’t inspire much faith in her as to the goodness of the people who would look past it.  Maybe when she’d just escaped, when she could blame all the red in her ledger on the Red Room, but not now.  Not now that her nightmares were pulling from things she’d done of her own free will.</p>
<p>There was just no way to balance out that much red.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Translations:<br/>Slava Bogu: Thank God.<br/>Budem zdorovy: Cheers.<br/>Vsem tem, komu ne povezlo: To all the ones who weren't as lucky.<br/>Mne ochen' zhal' ptitsu: Literally, I feel so sorry for the birds. Colloquially, "stop being so sad, let's be happy".<br/>Do dna: To the bottom. Used to encourage someone who's being slow in drinking.<br/>Za nashikh prekrasnykh tsarits: To our beautiful queens.<br/>Detka: Kid.<br/>Molodaya Mat': Little Mother.<br/>Moya sladkaya ptitsa: my sweet bird.<br/>Pashmina: type of scarf.<br/>(Spanish) Son sólo amantes. Estás paranoico y loco: It's just lovers. You're paranoid and crazy.<br/>(Russian) Yastreb: Hawk<br/>Super-Max: maximum security prison.<br/>(Russian) Do svidanya: goodbye.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Notes:<br/>Russia has an extensive list of rules for toasting and drinking. Nat follows them here, including the third toast being to the dead. Her family adds the 'lost and forgotten' part to that because some of their absentee members aren't dead, just missing.</p>
<p>Clint isn't a recovering alcoholic, but he'll sometimes say he is to avoid having to drink too much. His Dad being an abusive drunk made him leery of ever drinking too much.</p>
<p>In the comics, Clint had an older son that would have been born in 1996. In the movies, he and Laura got married sometime in the 90's. With how I messed with it, that would place Laura's first pregnancy and her marriage to Barney in 1996, but Cooper isn't born for another decade. Everything that can fuck up Clint tends to happen, and this is the first vacation from SHIELD he's taken for himself and not for another person, so... I went there. I'm sorry.</p>
<p>Technically, Nat's line about throwing brains is German, but in that family Germany, Russia, and America all play a part. It's a part of what makes her the complex sort of woman she is.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Ships in the Night: 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <h3>
  <span>Budapest, July, 1997</span>
</h3>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I brought mocktail ingredients,” Clint sang as he ducked in from the fire escape.  “You bested me with booze, but I shall prevail in the drinking of virgin daiquiris and tequila-less sunrises.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You are a strange man,” Natasha said, laughing.  She’d resisted returning to Budapest, surely they’d said and done what was needed last year, but her feet had carried her to a train and her hands had paid for a ticket to the town she was rapidly starting to associate with bad choices that led to pleasant consequences.  She unpacked her cargo from a thermal bag, layers of containers of various foods.  “It is good I am a fairly strange woman.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re an awesome woman, that’s what you are,” Clint told her.  “Laura sends her regards, and a quilt.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“A quilt?” Natasha asked, her head tilting in bemusement.  “What on earth possessed her to send me a quilt?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You know in old movies about gangsters, the don makes people kiss his ring to show they’re in?  Laura makes people take quilts.  You’re family now, as far as she’s concerned, and you’ll have a quilt.  It’s made out of recycled bits of clothing from the family, pillowcases from a bedding set she’s phasing out, and a SHIELD standard issue microfiber shock blanket because my boss is scared of her and Laura could probably get away with murder if she wanted to.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He handed her a package of fabric tied with a silver satin ribbon.  Natasha untied it carefully and unfolded a work of art.  She could see where the clothing was, and where the pale blue pillowcases filled in the background, but it didn’t resemble a box-bottom project at all.  The lines were curved, not straight, and the topstitching traced patterns like the edge of Japanese cloud prints across t-shirt soft pinks and purples, curling like ferns over the fuzzy green fleece and spiralling over lakes of well-worn denim.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s beautiful… but why would she make this for me?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Flip it over and look at the back,” he said.  She did, and saw words embroidered along the ribbon tape edging the blue microfiber backing that fluffed pleasantly around her chilled fingers.  They were in a simple Russian cypher, one she was reading as well as English when she was 12.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Remember where home is,” she read, slipping into Russian, “and always know your family loves you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Anytime you want to come home, Nat,” he said carefully.  “It’s there.  Take a closer look at the topstitching.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She flipped it again, spreading the blanket on floors she’d cleaned for this very visit.  Spread out, it was a picture of a twilight over a farm pond, forests of velvet and fields of green corduroy in the background.  The freeform stitching meant not everything was even, and there were mistakes, but some looked more deliberate than others.  A daisy of white cotton was cut with a mislaid stitch of red,and suddenly, it clicked.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“This is a map,” Natasha said in awe.  “To… your home?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yours too, if you want it.  It’s the Isle of Misfit Toys, but it works for me.  Laura wanted you to have a way there, but I’m not happy writing down anything about that location.  I mean, for her stuff, sure, but only as the young wife of the town miscreant who’s serving time, not as the sister in law of the local spook.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I understand,” she said, “but I’m not ready.  Almost, maybe, but not quite.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“When you are, you can find us,” he said simply.  “Now, what culinary snobbery did you bring?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I like food made of actual food, that’s not snobbery,” Natasha defended.  “Maybe I won’t share my mamoul with you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fig mamoul or date mamoul?” he asked, and she slapped his hand away from the tupperware.  “Okay, I take it back, you’re not a snob, you’re just high class and I am a lowly circus brat, please share?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s not a compliment to insult others, even if the insult is self directed,” she chided.  “Now go get plates, I also brought curries and a murder salad.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“With or without actual murder?” he asked, twisting his face as he set out plates on her card table.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Not made </span>
  <em>
    <span>with,</span>
  </em>
  <span> made </span>
  <em>
    <span>instead of,”</span>
  </em>
  <span> she told him, popping the lid to scoop out rough chopped vegetables in a thick red dressing.  Chunks of radish, jicama, and beet juxtaposed shreds of carrot and cabbage, big pieces of hand-ripped kale covered in minced garlic and chopped nuts filled out the rest.  “I got to use a big knife, therefore I didn’t kill the postman.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m so proud,” he joked, but she could see a level of honesty in his eyes.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>&lt;^&gt;</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Clint sighed and patted his belly.  It was good food, even if it had a distinct lack of three of the basic food groups, grease, salt, and refined sugar.  She’d brought it herself, made it herself, and from the skill involved in some of the dishes, had spent real time studying how to cook them.  It was reassuring to him that she had a hobby, for some reason.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Is it at all strange that I’m glad you decided you like cooking?” he asked, glancing at her as she swirled a red-painted nail in her frozen peach bellini substitute.  “I feel it’s weird I get calmer knowing you have something to do besides work.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well, my work tends to make people very dead, so I’d say it’s wise of you to think fondly of my non-fatal extracurricular activities,” she said thoughtfully.  “Is it strange I worry about your sister?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No, she was in pretty bad shape when you saw her.”  Clint sighed.  “I’ll tell her you worry, she’ll like that.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That was an unpleasant day, for all involved.  The detki…” she trailed off, seemingly fascinated by the garnish of mint he’d added.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Didn’t make it,” he said.  “Too young, too small.  He has a plot though, and she got him baptised in case.  We’re both of the wait-and-see faith, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I… am sorry to hear about that,” she said, not looking at Clint.  “Losing a wanted child can utterly wreck a parent if they’re worth a damn.  If there’s anything I can do, let me know.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Of course, Nat.  Laura’s healing up alright, mind and body, but I’ll let you know if she could use a girlfriend who gets it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t really,” she corrected quietly.  “I was never given the chance to lose a child, wanted or not.  I only know what I’ve seen.  Children come and go in places like where I grew up, but there were people who were parents… they didn’t handle the going part easily.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Of course not, they were parents, parents are supposed to love their kids.  I mean, mine didn’t, but I’m aware I had shitty parents.”  He thought.  He did know sort of what decent parents acted and looked like, even if it was non-traditional and dangerous.  “The Carsons were pretty good parental substitutes, so I did get to see some good models, but I’m thinking that most human rights organizations frown on equipping ten year olds with live steel and longbows and putting them on horseback to entertain crowds for their supper, sooo…  There’s that.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I really think they’d frown on what I went through a bit more,” she remarked dryly.  “Take your happy memories where you can get them, Clint.  Trust me on that.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Do you miss your parents?” he asked suddenly.  “The ones you think of as the real ones, do you miss them?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She paused, her face blank, and his heart leapt into his throat.  He’d been banking on their truce of honesty in the semi-sacred space of Budapest Day, but some questions you didn’t force an honest answer to.  He felt his palms sweat and his breath come shallowly, working up the courage to tell her not to answer.  As the moment stretched on, he didn’t know what he feared more, her lying to him in this place where he’d assumed total honesty, or her telling him the truth.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I miss Zima,” she said carefully.  “He… had been broken, very badly, long before I met him.  Sometimes he wasn’t Zima, but I always loved him, and when he could have love, I know he had it for me.  That is how I know he is my parent, because, while I know very little of real love… I </span>
  <em>
    <span>know</span>
  </em>
  <span> that love is for children, and he had it for me, so I must be his child.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Clint felt his heart shatter and fall away from the painful knot forming behind his Adam's apple.  Such cold Aristotelian logic shouldn’t be applied so carefully to a topic like parents loving children, and yet he knew why she used it.  The night wind crept through the window’s gaps and she shivered, sitting ramrod stiff and isolated on the floor.  Clint scooped up Laura’s gift and draped it over Nat, letting her slip a hand around his legs, and sitting beside her under the map to home.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>&lt;^&gt;</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Kasperov nervously checked the phone again while getting in the elevator.  The new kinds had a way to send little notes, like a pager, and the client had one of those fancy tracker things on his target, but it was difficult to trust it not to be faulty, and looking again was reassuring that the assassin found the right place.  Budapest wasn’t a place you just burned down the target’s building and hoped you got them.  This apartment building alone had units belonging to no fewer than five people who could make the rest of Kasperov’s life both very unpleasant and very short if the hit got sloppy.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Needless to say, Kasperov didn’t intend to get sloppy.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The information had led to the building across the street, although street was a generous term for the alley that separated the apartment that the target was in from the apartment of the poor, unlucky man who lived in the place Kasperov had chosen to use.  The unwitting host had been knocked unconscious with a dart, there was no need to raise an alarm with an early gunshot.  The apartment he was watching was bare, almost empty.  A folding card table with glasses of brightly colored drinks half finished on it gave the only proof that the occupant wasn’t a stoic, spartan ghost with no physical needs or desires.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Kasperov blew out carefully as thon took aim.  The man the assassin had come to kill crossed the window, carrying a stack of clear boxes.  The crosshairs centered and the killer took a slow, steady breath and slightly depressed the trigger, when a red haired woman with a stern but beautiful face took the stack.  Kasperov coughed and yanked the shaking trigger finger from the gun.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Some things weren’t worth any amount of money.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Downstairs, Kasperov pulled out his phone and dialed the client.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Is it done?” the American asked.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Net.  I told you to get me the information on the target first.  You did not do that.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“He wasn’t there?  The trackers are infallible.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh, he was there, all right,” Kasperov chuckled grimly.  “He and his lover.  You didn’t tell me he was the prey of a Black Widow.  I know not to interfere in her hunts, that’s how people end up floating in the Danube with their ballsacks sewn into their mouths.  Find another sucker.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Black Widow?  I don’t see how one murderous housewife is such a problem for the best assassin for hire.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Then you are a fool, and I want nothing to do with this.  That was no ordinary killer, that was one of Russia’s most feared agents of death.  That was Chernaya Vdova, and I’ve heard what happened to the last man to cross her.  We are done.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I paid you half up front,” the client whined.  Kasperov laughed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And for that I will not tell her you sent me if she tracks me down for peeping in her window like a pervert.  But money doesn’t buy you stupidity.  Don’t call me again.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The mercenary had no idea why the American had wanted an agent of his own organization dead, or why he’d felt the need to contract that death out, but honestly, Kasperov couldn't care less if paid to try.  Any issue that brought you up against the Black Widow on your own aggression was by nature personal, and Kasperov did not deal in personal matters.</span>
</p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<h3>
  <span>The Sudanese Wilderness, May, 1998</span>
</h3>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Caw Caw motherfuckers!” Clint shouted, drawing the attention of the gun runners below him.  He’d chosen his perch specifically to draw the eyes of anyone looking for him right into the path of the late afternoon sun.  Several guards swore and dropped a hand from their guns to shield against the glare, which opened things up for Coulson to pick them off from the cover of the wagon of ammo to go with the pallet of high end weaponry they were selling.  He had no idea how a group of warlords came to be bidding on Stark Industries’ latest smart missiles and computer targeting rifles, but he had no intention of letting them keep the sale.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Barton, that’s just unprofessional,” May said into his com.  “You have no idea if they’ve ever even had sexual relations, let alone with their or another person’s mother.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“My apologies, May,” he said as calmly as one can when being fired on by many men with large guns.  Their aim was shot by the blinding sun, but enough bullets in the air will take down anyone.  “I’ll work towards more accurate insults.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She laughed.  “See that you do.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>One of the warlords had the bright idea to make for the contested weapons, and Clint took the risk to jump down onto some barrels to get a good shot at him.  His gun jammed and Clint swore viciously as he swept it up into a club position and leapt for the warlord trying to open the locked crate.  A gun went off and his ribs burned for a second before the adrenaline of the fight covered it in soothing rage.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We’re being overrun on the east side!” Hunter shouted.  “I need cover!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Morse, why did you bring him again?” May asked.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We needed more fingers on triggers and I trust him,” Bobbi returned.  “Clint, can you get in place to pull the combo move we did in Malaysia?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“On it!” he called.  He ducked and ran, tucking fingers together and taking a knee in time for Bobbi to use his hands as a springboard to get enough height to come down on her staff like a vengeful stripper, snapping brutal full body powered kicks at Hunter’s assailants.  They were stunned enough at her particular version of death from above that nobody noticed Clint releasing a bag of bomb-marbles.  She grabbed Hunter and hauled him behind a wall as the first attackers began slipping on the ball bearing shapes that now covered the flagstones.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Cover your ears or learn sign language, folks,” Clint warned, thumbing open the detonator.  “Fire in the hole!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The blast took out seven gunmen and left the ground covered in craters and squishy bits.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What on earth?” May asked as she shook sand from her hair as she helped Bobbi stand up.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I love SciDiv and their toys,” Clint said as an explanation.  “Christmas came early when they asked me to field test some stuff.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“At least it’s effective,” she sighed.  “I hate how durable these jerks are.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We’ll be done soon,” Coulson told them.  “Focus on the ones still inside.  I want at least one that can still talk from each faction that was bidding.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Jeez, make it hard, why don’t ‘cha,” Clint complained, switching to hand to hand to limit fatalities.  “I hate punching.  Punching makes me tired.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’ll survive,” Bobbi said calmly.  “Just help me tie this guy up and rest your weak little baby knuckles.  You big wimp.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You can be mean,” he remarked.  Their banter had taken a turn for the mocking after she’d hooked up with Hunter.  He didn’t usually mind, it helped him remember that Hunter was uncomfortable with flirting and it’s not like he hadn’t ever heard worse.  It was just that Bobbi didn’t always know her own strength, so to speak, and it was hard to explain why telling him his momma wore combat boots or threatening to paint his toenails purple if he fell asleep on the jet again was okay when calling his nerves over a potential hand injury wimpy wasn’t.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Interrogation was never what Clint would call ‘fun’ exactly.  He didn’t get that strange glee that Bobbi got when they decided to be difficult.  Of course, he also wasn’t half as effective as May, and the better you were at something the more likely it was to be fun.  Clint didn’t like having to go to a lot of effort for his intel, he liked acting on it more.  He let his mind wander as he rested out of the way, instead, watching the prisoners.  Lip reading was hard, but also rewarding in ways that interrogation never was, and it was fun to stretch that skill to cover other languages, especially when it was clear they saw him as dumb muscle too stupid to be spying on them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Of course, it also got him unpleasant intel.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You.  With me,” he said briskly, pulling a Saudi man in loose robes up by one arm.  “Where is she?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t know how you mean,” the man said, smile wide and eyes too tight with fear to be anything but a lie.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Tell me where you stashed your pet spider and maybe I don’t give you to Murder Barbie,” Clint threatened, pointing the man’s head at where Bobbi was slowly dislocating every joint in a man’s arm.  Nasty, he must have made a pass at her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“To the north, five kilometers,” he said, suddenly much more agreeable.  “There is a small house.  She is in the basement.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That was lucky for you that you felt like sharing,” Clint told him seriously.  “But I’m not letting you go.  Phil, this one gets held back from Bobbi if she gets stab happy, I have other work in the area.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Phil just nodded.  He often gave Clint room to work on things outside of mission parameters.  With their HERO missions, it was necessary sometimes.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>&lt;^&gt;</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Natasha spat filthy water onto the ground.  Over the course of what had seemed to be days but her highly trained senses said was five hours, she’d dragged herself from the dirty well they’d thrown her in.  It was a neat trick, bind her hands and force her legs to do nothing but keep her afloat.  It might have worked if she hadn’t been willing to dislocate an arm to bring her hands in front of her and then pull herself toward the wall of the well itself.  Now, though, her shoulder burned and her gut clenched painfully on contaminated water and a dying adrenaline rush.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Na proshloy nedele ya poshli v Sibir'.  Vint vse eto,” she hissed between racking coughs.  Getting out of this cave would take reserves she didn’t have.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Why did you go to Siberia last week?” asked a blessedly familiar voice.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fuck you, Barton, you know very well I was cursing,” she returned gratefully.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Nat-Nat, be nice,” he chided.  “You want the emergency rations or not?  I brought Logan Bar Brownies.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She perked up.  “With the real kind of chocolate?  Not the stupid sweet crap?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What do you take me for?” he asked, pretending offence as he scooped her up in strong arms.  “Of course the real kind.  I used semi sweet baker’s chocolate, oat flour and half the sugar that any normal human would need to tolerate it.  Count to three.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Odin... dva... uch!” she yelped as he reset her shoulder.  “Chto bolit, vy ublyudok.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Man you’re cranky,” he commented.  “But you did what I needed, so here’s your treat.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The brownie was crumbly and bitter as she bit into it and Natasha moaned.  It was always amazing to her how he could turn a soft, decadent baked good that she’d otherwise hate into a taste of home.  She remembered Zima carefully shaving a D ration bar into dehydrated oats to heat with water over a fire on her birthday, and the bitter tang of the chocolate signalling that this was a special treat.  Those were good memories, and after their first return to Budapest ended with many drunken confessions, Clint had made sure to have treats that called back to those times.  It was almost enough for her to forgive him as he poked her numb and tingling feet.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Stop that, it tickles.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh, ho, ho,” he laughed smugly.  “Not so tough now, are we?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Shut your whore mouth or I’m going to make a purse out of your pancreas.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No you’re not, I’m making sure you’ll be able to walk in a month instead of using a wheelchair the rest of your life.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I will make matching earrings of your kidneys,” she threatened.  “Maybe a nice intestine belt, although that seems hard to coordinate with shoes.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m sure you’re very scary,” he said as he helped her stand up and handed her a bag of clothing.  “Unfortunately, I had common sense beaten out of me at a young age, it was very tragic.  Take this go-bag as a token of apology, it’s my clothing, but it should fit you with some tucking in and belts and what-all.  Bye Nat.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She ran a hand over the heather grey fleece lined sweater that had been washed to the point of cloud-like softness on top of the bag.  She could almost smell the detergent he used and the warm leather scent that he exuded blending with the chalk of traction powder and the green scents he carried with him from Laura’s home.  It was ridiculous, but at least she could blame exhaustion and injury for her fuzzy focus and strange fascination with his shirt.  Although it had been nice, to have someone come for her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Clint…” she started, looking up to find he was gone.  Well, of course he was, he wasn’t bound to follow her around tending her every need like some cursed knight in a fairy tale.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It still felt lonely.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>&lt;^&gt;</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Fury scraped papers together into a messy pile.  Paperwork was the evil he suffered for agreeing to take this job, but while he knew it was important, he would never ever enjoy making it all neat and tidy.  It wasn’t the first time he’d thought that, particularly as he worked to keep SHIELD and HERO separate.  Phil loved that shit, so did Jasper and that new girl, Hetty.  Maybe it would be worth the effort to make a whole division for handling the various forms and files that cropped up.  Of course, they might just make more of the damn things.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Fuck SciDiv and their empty promises of ‘paperless’ offices.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A knock on his door pulled Nick out of the trance of internal complaints.  His head went up and he smiled at his friend.  “Alex, come in.  You want to gloat about escaping the paper sea?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No, no.  Not in the least, Nick.  The WSC keeps me in plenty of paperwork.  I wanted to touch base with you about a possible threat that came to my attention recently.  A Cold War program ended recently, and one of the… call ‘em graduates, decided to take up a bit of freelance spy work.  She’d been pretty thoroughly indoctrinated, and even before that, you don’t sign up for a super soldier program without a certain degree of patriotic fever.  She’s a threat, and needs to be brought to justice.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Nick hid his frown in a carefully neutral resting face.  People who ran super soldier programs were hit and miss with their motives.  The people who went into them however… were historically speaking not usually enthusiastic or even willing volunteers.  That got forgotten in the clamor over superheroes and comic book shenanigans too often for his comfort.  More than one white colleague had ignored the implications of the Erskine trials and been forcefully reminded by Nick why a bunch of black men getting stuck with experimental needles so a white boy could get to Europe wasn’t a shining moment in American history.  Alex wasn’t usually like that.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I can arrange to have someone look into it.  What’s her name?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What?” Alex asked, seeming surprised.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Her name.  The thing people call this threat of yours.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The Black Widow,” Alex told him, obviously feeling back on track.  Nick frowned.  He could understand euphemisms and code-words, but he never got them confused with names.  It was a bad habit to get into.  Alex didn’t seem to notice Nick’s concern, which was worrying on its own.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’ll put my best people on it,” he promised.  That was easy enough.  His best people probably already knew her.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Translations:<br/>Mamoul: a type of fruit-stuffed cookie.<br/>Chernaya Vdova: Black Widow.<br/>Na proshloy nedele ya poshli v Sibir'.: Literally, "Last week I went to Siberia." Actually, "I should have gone to Siberia."<br/>Vint vse eto.: Screw it all.<br/>Odin... dva... uch!: One... two... ouch!<br/>Chto bolit, vy ublyudok.: That hurts, you bastard.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Notes:<br/>Mocktails are meant to replace cocktails as drinks, usually colorful or fruity ones like daiquiris or tequila sunrises.</p>
<p>Clint and Nat both use cooking as therapy, but they go at it differently with different results. Clint makes food that tastes good, because he's got a strong need to make people like him. He cares less about nutrition and more about the relaxation and the food-bribes he ends up with. Nat cooks to create a sense of normal to base around because she only has outside views of functional humans. She cares about nutrition because she needs to keep her body going with her mild serum metabolic boost and came from a place where nutrition bricks were used in place of real food.</p>
<p>Kasperov is an agender assassin and not a part of Marvel Canon. I don't care, I love thon anyway.</p>
<p>In the 90's pagers were phasing out in tech circles, but smartphones weren't yet a thing. Kasperov has one of the Nokia brick phones and gets texts which is Super Duper Fancy Future Tech.</p>
<p>A 'Black Widow' can refer to a killer who marries then murders her targets. In this case, Black Widow refers to someone much more deadly.</p>
<p>May has yet to encounter the thing that made her into the hard person we know and try to love. That's why she's a bit OoC</p>
<p>Teasing can be fun or mean, like verbal roughhousing. Much like with physical roughhousing, not knowing your own strength or not knowing where previous injury is on the other person can lead to hurting them where you didn't mean to. Bobbi doesn't have good control and Clint doesn't have good communication, so this gets further out of hand than anyone wants it to.</p>
<p>Logan Bars or D rations are a type of emergency chocolate bar to keep soldiers going on minimal food. Because they're meant as a last resort, they were purposely made bitter, dry, and hard, to keep soldiers from eating them right away. Natasha grew up thinking they were a treat, because Bucky and Darcy made sure she and her sisters had some treats, and D rations and their equivalents were the easiest form of sweet to get.</p>
<p>Some people like paperwork, like Phil. Some people hate it, like Fury. Almost everyone agrees that calling offices 'paperless' because of introducing computer tools was a cruel joke. It's never paperless.</p>
<p>In the comics, before Steve received the serum, it was tested on African American soldiers. Isaiah Bradley was the first person it worked for with no obvious negative side effects. America has a long and mostly nasty history of treating black people like lab rats and Nick is very aware of that, and the fact that white folks tend to forget about it when it suits them. Here, he's facing the fact that someone he considered a friend has shown signs of racism of omission, forgetting what is important to remember. It's even more telling that Pierce follows that slip with dehumanizing Natasha.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Ships in the Night: 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>New Ships Content! (Finally!)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <h3>
  <span>Budapest, July, 1998</span>
</h3>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Her phone rang and Natasha jumped.  It wouldn’t have bothered her if it was the doorbell, every safe house got hit by traveling salesmen and door-to-door petitions for charity or politicians.  The phone though, implied someone wanted to talk to her.  She didn’t want anyone even knowing she was here.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Halló?  Ki ez?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m bringing a friend to dinner, you’ve met once.  He says you discussed travel plans?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Her heart stopped for a moment.  She trusted Clint, but if he was bringing his handler….  This could go so wrong.  She didn’t want to mix their thing with work, even if they seemed to do that anyway because of how often their work went so sideways.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Are you there?” Clint asked.  “I’m sorry, I should have asked instead of telling.  Surprising you was wrong of me.  I can have him stay at the hotel, we’ll work this out.  Please say something.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t mix business and family,” she told him, woodenly.  Her fingers crushed a paper towel as she took deep breaths.  “I don’t want him here.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Then he can stay back,” Clint said carefully.  “I can’t get rid of him entirely, we’re technically working.  Shit hit the fan.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Should I get my toolbox out?” she asked, nerves over her own vulnerability switching to concern for her friend.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That’s a very bad idea,” he laughed mirthlessly.  He sounded tired.  “I’ll be over in a little bit and we can talk then.  Just stay put and don’t shoot me when I come in.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I won’t.  Take the door, the fire escape is looking rusty and I don’t trust you not to break the rail when you’re this tired sounding.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She hung up without saying goodbye and busied herself with finishing touches to the meal.  Her hands paused over the bowl of prepared blini batter.  Would the bad luck of making a funeral food be worth it?  She had made it with the idea of cutting her old ties and asking Clint to help her find a new life, but that gesture seemed ominous now.   </span>
  <em>
    <span>Well, stop being an old woman and just make food</span>
  </em>
  <span>, she scolded herself.  Luck never helped her one way or the other before this, there was no need to turn half-remembered superstition into phobia now.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The oil heated up quickly, and the batter sizzled and popped as she poured it, but soon became the golden rounds of buckwheat pancakes.  She flipped them with the same precision she used to target a strike with a dagger, each one neat and perfect.  It grated on her, so she purposely dragged the batter of the next one to make an egg.  That caught her mind, and she started trying other designs, crescents and hearts and a lop-sided flower.  When Clint knocked, she scooped the last blini, a misshapen attempt at a rainbow, onto the serving plate and went to answer it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She held her body to one side as she put a hand over the peephole, waiting for a gunshot.  When no blast of lead came, she knocked the door five times.  She was rewarded by Clint’s two-knock reply.  Unlocking the deadbolt, she let him in.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You really suck at ‘shave and a haircut’ Nat,” he said casually.  “I brought snickerdoodles.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s a silly tradition and I don’t want people outside of the circle of trust to be able to predict the code,” she told him.  “I made kebabs for dinner, but I’d like to have a cookie now.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Life is uncertain,” he agreed.  She joined him on the chorus of “eat dessert first.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The cookies, as always, were perfect.  Clint had somehow mastered getting the base fluffy and crumbly without losing the coherency of the cookie itself, and Natasha thought small wars could be fought over his spice mix.  Her kebabs blended the traditional lamb with red and green bell peppers, chunks of onion, and mushrooms, although Clint ate them by sliding it all off and eating one thing at a time.  They ate in relative silence, the tension of whatever crisis had brought him here with a coworker filling the space that conversation usually took.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So,” she said, too tired to resist the inevitable.  “What shit have you stirred this time?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Not me,” Clint said, but without his usual defensiveness.  Oddly, that convinced her more.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I believe you.  What’s going on?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I got orders from above.  A ‘dangerous rogue element, thoroughly indoctrinated and highly skilled’ has been reported to be running loose.”  He curled his fingers like quotation marks around the description.  “An assassin who graduated from a super soldier program in Russia.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And you’ve been sent to kill me,” she said with resignation.  It wasn’t like she blamed him, orders could be hard to disobey.  It still stung.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>&lt;^&gt;</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No,” Clint insisted immediately.  Her calm acceptance of his presumed betrayal was heartbreaking.  “No, Nat, I would </span>
  <em>
    <span>never.</span>
  </em>
  <span>  I’d tell Fury to go fuck himself before I’d kill you.  I’d tell Peggy Carter to go fuck herself, and she’s</span>
  <em>
    <span> terrifying.</span>
  </em>
  <span>  I was sent to, quote ‘bring the Black Widow to justice’ end quote.  There are lots of paths to justice.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I wasn’t made for justice,” she told him, fiddling with her fork.  “I was made to break things.  I was made to worm my way inside the hearts of men and rip them to pieces.  I’m not a black widow, I’m a parasitoid wasp.  You might as well get the bug spray.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m not giving up on you,” he told her sharply.  She looked up at him with wide eyes.  “I may have been sent to get rid of you, but I’m making a different call.  You’re just another broken child trying to find a way to fit in the world without letting all your jagged edges rip you up.  I know how that goes, but now you have a choice.  Join me in fighting for a better future where kids like we were don’t get broken, don’t face the same shit.  Help us make something good.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Wipe some red from my ledger,” she whispered.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Exactly,” he replied.  “Come on, Nat.  Do you want to be a hero?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I want to be a human,” she declared.  “With free will and choices and the right to make mistakes and then the right to make amends.  I want to live free.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Congrats,” he said with a grin.  “You’re hired.  Let’s go tell Coulson.”  He knew he was jumping the gun here, but he didn’t care.  It would keep him from having to do something he didn’t want to, like fake her death or quit SHIELD.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m not sure you have the authority to hire me,” Natasha said with a wry grin.  “Even if I decided I want this job, I don’t think you could offer it to me.  You’re just a field agent.  A footsoldier.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh, I can’t hire you for SHIELD ,” he said, picking up his glass.  “But the Heritage Espionage and Resistance Organization really really likes it’s foot soldiers.  When you’re grassroots, each blade of grass matters.  And if you get brought into them, it’s just a hop, a skip, and a jump to working for SHIELD.  There’s some management overlap.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I trust you,” she said, playing with her wineglass.  “I’m not sure if I trust SHIELD.  I know where the darkness can hide; I’ve hidden in it myself.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“If it helps, we know the darkness hides in SHIELD too,” he tried, hoping honesty would do the trick.  “That’s why HERO exists.  To sit beside the sleepers and keep everyone else safe from them.  It doesn’t always work, but it’s helpful, to know it’s there and stem the tide.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That doesn’t sound like a hero.  That sounds like a monster to scare the darkness.”  She smiled, a dark thing with murder in the glint of her teeth and bloodlust at the curve of dimple she hid with a sip of plum soda.  “I can be that kind of monster.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Clint was about to suggest a toast when the door was blown in by a small bomb.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>&lt;^&gt;</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Coulson smiled as Fury rubbed his temple.  Clint’s antics were enough to give most handlers a headache, but there was something strangely satisfying in seeing the great Nicholas J Fury brought low by something as simple as lateral thinking.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Sir?” he asked eventually, if only to keep Fury from silently imploding.  “You had questions?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“How?” </span>
  </em>
  <span>Fury settled on.  “How did your asset go on a simple threat removal mission and come away with two national travel bans in different aliases, a stack of reimbursement paperwork taller than my mug, five broken bones, second degree burns, a medal of valor from Lichtenstein, </span>
  <em>
    <span>and</span>
  </em>
  <span> a pet assassin?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Agent Barton has always done best in adverse circumstances, Sir,” Phil said calmly.  “And Romanova’s not a pet.  She’s a recruit.  Actually, as soon as I can get the right people in place to test her out of the class work, she’ll be a probationary agent.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t want to know,” Fury said, sagging in his chair to signal that The Director was gone and Nick was in his place.  “I’m going to </span>
  <em>
    <span>have</span>
  </em>
  <span> to know, because I’m going to have to explain this to the World Security Council, but I really and truly just don’t want to know.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Would you like the truth first, or the spin?” Phil offered.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Spin,” Fury said with a sigh.  “Let me internalize it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Barton realized on the mission that Black Widow was breaking her standard MO in ways that made him believe that he could flip her.  He consulted with his handler, me, and with the time restrictions and the odds she’d turn on him if she caught him following her, I approved a mission objective change.  He made contact, established a rapport, and got her to agree to join SHIELD.  After that, several agents of powers unknown began to chase them.  Agent Barton, Ms. Romanova and myself attempted to call for extraction, but the communications were down, possibly from an electronic attack by agents of an unknown enemy.  We extracted ourselves from Hungary and proceeded by land across Europe to the SHIELD base in Marseilles.  In escaping, Agent Barton’s skills were required, two times which caught negative attention from the local law, necessitating cover changes, and once catching positive attention, hence the invitation to come receive the Knight's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Principality of Liechtenstein from Prince Hans-Adam the Second.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Okay, that sounds enough like the crazy motherfucker he is to fit with Barton’s file,” Fury said.  “What’s the truth?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Romanova picked up the Kazarian hit when ops planning sent him to her apartment after she defected.  She also helped him bring in Whitney Frost.  They’ve been friends for three years and his sister gave Natasha a quilt.  When Clint got the assignment he decided to try bringing her to justice by offering her a job enforcing it.  Agents of perfectly well known powers took exception and tried to set it up to look like she killed him.  Everything else is the same.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What are the odds that putting her on Delta will increase the insanity?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Very good, Sir.  But she’s also shown a high degree of control over how badly Clint gets himself injured.  He could have died in Slovakia, Slovenia, </span>
  <em>
    <span>and</span>
  </em>
  <span> Sokovia.  Countries that start with S seemed particularly dangerous this time.  I’m grateful she kept it to broken bones and some mild scorching.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Fury said slowly.  “But all three of those countries are before you got to Lichtenstein.  Where he saved the infant Prince Joseph Wenzel, second in line to the throne.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That’s right, Sir,” Phil said with some pride.  “Romanova’s insistence on getting him medical care before leaving Austria meant he had the crutch he used to shove the Prince’s bouncey walker out of the way when a bomb threatened the structural integrity of the stonework.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I was right,” Fury moaned.  “I didn’t want to know.”</span>
</p>
<hr/>
<h3>
  <span>Washington DC, June, 1999</span>
</h3>
<p>
  <span>Clint stretched his back, flexing the muscles that ran under his quiver.  They got stiff if he sat still too long, and the vinyl covered bench seat wasn’t helping.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Natasha had texted him, asking him to go ahead and get their table at the diner, the one with the good sight lines, since she was running late.  Natasha was never late, which made him antsy as he sipped his coffee.  He was three cups in when he started to think they’d switched him to decaf, and four when he decided to go find Nat and get an explanation for what was wrong.  He stood up and the world went sideways on him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Aww, coffee,” he complained.  It wasn’t a surprise to be caught by strong arms and half dragged out the back, just sad to know he couldn’t trust that diner again.  They made good pie, and the coffee - when it wasn’t drugged - was excellent.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He woke up tied to a chair.  There was a mirror in front of him, so he could see how bad he looked, sleep deprived and stubbled, his tee shirt wrinkled and stretched, his pants removed, showing boxers with rubber ducks on them.  He also didn’t have shoes.  A light clicked on behind him and he realized the wall at his back was clear.  The set up on the other side was the same, the mirrors reflecting each other into infinity.  There was someone else in the second room.  A blond man, also sans shoes.  The man lifted his head and Clint felt his gut drop.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A doppleganger.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Which meant someone else had been taken too.  Probably Nat, it had bugged him when she was late, it wasn’t her MO.  She was going to be given the devil’s coinflip, pick one of the two identical men to die.  Moral injury, which might hit scar tissue, if she was lucky, but knowing Natasha and the way she thought, probably wouldn’t.  He pulled experimentally on the bonds, eyeing the dopple as the other man did the same.  The movements weren’t identical, but he matched Clint well enough to pass, probably.  It came down to if he could speak to Nat, let her know which one he was.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Minutes swept by as he systematically eliminated options for escape, testing each one just far enough to determine it wouldn’t be viable before backing down to take deep breaths and force his heart rate down.  His dopple had taken to screaming, interspersed with singing catchy country songs and top forty pop trash.  Not a bad strategy, Clint admitted in his head, and one he might use if he weren’t so concerned with getting free before Nat was forced to kill him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A speaker clicked on moments after the dopple started a rendition of I Want It That Way that was infectious enough to get Clint humming the background track.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You say you have changed, Miss Romanova?  Prove it.  Save your partner.  One button controls the vents in each room.  Press it, and the vent will close, protecting the occupant.  You cannot press both, of course, attempting will lock both vents open.  Failure to choose correctly will mean you both die.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Nat!” the dopple screamed.  It sounded like his heart was breaking.  Clint honestly felt a little bad for the guy’s death, he was a talented actor.  “Nat, can you hear me?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I hear you,” said Natasha’s voice, but it wasn’t a good sound.  It was cold and hollow, worn out.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Nat, you okay?” Clint asked.  “How bad did they hurt you?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Piss off, Mirror Mirror,” the dopple growled.  “Nat, you can’t trust him.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Clint rolled his eyes.  Please.  Nat didn’t trust anyone, of course she wouldn’t trust him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The one who spoke first,” she said cooly, “what is my father’s name?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Zima,” the man answered immediately.  Clint frowned.  He didn’t know how that bit of intel had slipped.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The other,” Nat continued, equally cool.  “What’s my favorite chocolate?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“D-rations,” Clint said without hesitation.  She never ate them in front of others.  There was no way this was leaked.  “Logan bars, bitter and dry, just like your humor.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Number one, why was I in Lima?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Infiltrating an oil executive’s staff on a job, but you didn’t tell me that, I figured it out later.”  The dopple sighed.  “Come on, Nat, we don’t know how soon this place goes toxic.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“He’s right, Nat,” Clint said with a sigh.  “We don’t have time for this sadistic game they’re playing.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fine,” she said and it sounded like there was a sob and a sigh in the word, although both were buried deep.  “Last question, both of you, have we ever gone to Budapest together?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No,” Clint said.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes,” the dopple said.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The vents clicked shut and the other room started to fill with smoke.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“WHAT THE FUCK NAT?” the dopple screamed.  “It’s Budapest, it’s OUR place!  How could you?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A light clicked on to the side, and Clint could see Natasha’s face drawn in harsh, pained lines as she held down a button.  The greenish haze started falling from a vent above her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Nat, switch buttons, quick!”  the dopple shouted.  “You remember what he said, if you choose wrong we both die, this is proof I’m the real Clint.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Natasha ignored him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Nat,” Clint said softly, looking at her.  “It’s not your fault.  Get out of the smoke, now.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m not leaving you,” she said.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>&lt;^&gt;</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Natasha knew from the moment she saw the two men which was Clint.  The fake was very good, but Clint had a million little idiosyncrasies that couldn’t be copied.  Even in her current state, drugged, dehydrated and in pain, she knew her Yastreb.  The torture that had begun days ago when she was grabbed heading out her door for their meet up at the diner made it hard to resolve him into one man, but she knew.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She questioned them to determine who had taken them, what information they had.  She tossed Clint an easy question, to keep up appearances as she scanned his room for possible escape methods.  When she pushed the button and smoke fell from the vents, she almost questioned herself, but Clint’s calmness as he ordered her to leave him cemented the choice.  After all, she’d been told choosing wrong would kill them both, not that choosing correctly would set them free.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m not leaving you,” she promised.  Part of her heart skipped, a secret story rising up through memory… “not without you” was another way to say “I love you”, a promise paid for in blood.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Nat!” Clint screamed.  He thrashed, twisting the chair to the floor, rolling over it and splintering it beneath him.  She pressed her hand more firmly to the button, leaning her weight on it as her abused body fought the toxins.  Even if she fell, her weight would keep it pressed.  Clint could get free from here.  He was a good agent.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Glad to know you think so,” he said, and there was a crashing sound.  The idiot had broken the glass, exposing himself too.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What happened to good agent?” he groused, pulling her off the button and onto his shoulder like some sort of caveman.  “Eh, caveman’s not much better.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It occurred to Natasha that she hadn’t been speaking.  A momentary fantasy asked if this was a psychic, a flawless fake Clint taking his knowledge and mannerisms to fool her.  Maybe the Real Clint was still at the diner?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“One, I wouldn’t be at the diner, I’d be looking for you since you’re never late and that damn text should have tipped me off that something was up.  Two, you may not be meaning to speak but you are.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s not sodium pentathol,” she protested.  “I’m immune.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So it’s a different drug to destroy the brain to mouth filter, they make lots of them,” Clint said.  “Hold on, Nat, I found us a rooftop.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re not actually a hawk,” she grumbled, but knowing what was happening made it easier to focus on driving the drug from her system.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I know,” he said, and laid her down so he could block the door.  She took the freedom to force herself to vomit, purging out some of the drugs, although with as little there was in her stomach that was difficult.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“When did we get to the roof?” she asked, spitting out the last remnants of thickened saliva and bile.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re really out of it,” he replied instead of answering.  “We’re on the fourth floor, can you handle a jump?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Just go, get help,” she said.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Not without you,” he told her, and her heart constricted.  “Fuck it, I’m lighting a signal fire.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She sat up and was about to ask what he meant when she saw the battered kettle grill he was looking at.  “Clint, no.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Clint yes,” he countered.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Burning down the building with us on it is not helpful,” she said.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’ll stay in the grill,” he told her, stripping his shirt off.  He doused it in the lighter fluid from the yellow bottle under the grill.  He was trying to get a spark off the edge of the lid with a rock when she found a lighter.  Someone who used this unofficial break room was a smoker.  The fire was hot, and bright, and not going to last.  She stripped off her own shirt to join his, then her pants.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>&lt;^&gt;</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Why is it that anytime two agents end up naked on the roof of a KGB safehouse, it’s my team?” Coulson asked with a sigh.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You have fun agents?” Clint offered with punch-drunk hope.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Go to bed, Barton,” Phil ordered, pointing to his bedroom door.  He’d pulled rank to get a quinjet to go looking for them when they missed their check-ins, and after finding them thanks to Barton’s predictable proximity to large open fires, he’d taken them to his place.  They were obviously in no emotional shape to handle Medical poking at them, but their wounds weren’t immediately life threatening.  Natasha was the worst off, but she was downing water and charcoal tablets and had a healing factor.  Clint shot him a lazy salute and trotted off to faceplant in pillows.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Do you need my debrief now, sir?” Natasha asked.  He passed her another bottle of water.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No, Nat.  I actually wanted to know if you felt the need to go to Medical.  Clint’ll be fine, but you got a pretty hefty dose of an unknown toxin, and they were much rougher on you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“They wanted to break me,” she said, and it hurt his heart that she could be calm about that.  Her small smile soothed the ache, though.  “They were not terribly good at it.  I give it a six of ten.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m just glad we got you both out of there,” Phil admitted.  “Especially since you were naked in the middle of the night.  It’s summer, but still.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Thank you,” Natasha said.  “For getting us out of the cold.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Phil smiled at her.  “Always, Natasha.  Always.  You want me to fold out the couch for you?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Not necessary,” she said with a head shake.  She got up, taking the quilt he’d draped around her shoulders with her into his bedroom.  He heard her order Clint to move over, and his archer’s sleepy acceptance.  They would be all right.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And in the meantime, he had the watch.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Translations:<br/>Halló? Ki ez?: (Hungarian) Hello? Who is this?<br/>Toolbox: weapons.<br/>Sleepers: sleeper agents. Think SHIELDRA.<br/>MO: modus operandi, way of acting.</p>
<p>Notes:<br/>Blinis are tasty buckwheat yeast-batter pancakes sometimes served at funerals in Russia. The batter is thick enough that patterns are easy.</p>
<p>"Shave and a haircut" refers to a specific knock pattern that mimics a song, Shave and a hair cut, two bits" being the lyrics. It's a very predictable code.</p>
<p>Even now, Natasha expects betrayal because of her background. It's also hard for her, despite living it, to believe people will disobey orders. She internalized the expectation of torture as punishment for failure.</p>
<p>On the subject of Clint, arson, and Phil assuming Fire Means Barton: Barton doesn't SET the fires often.  He <i>does</i> frequently end up NEAR them.  He's a magnet for chaos and property destruction. (No, Clint, you STILL can't name yourself Collateral Damage Man.)<br/>He DOES set bad guy habitations on fire though. He just doesn't use explosives like Ciara. Fires happening away from BGHs are <i>not</i> his fault, he's just... Usually what the fires were aimed at. Which may be why he sets BGHs on fire so often. It's only fair that he sets them on fire when they keep trying to do the same to him, right?</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Chartreuse Prologues</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Of Clans and Horrid Missions from Hell.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <h3>
  <span>Prologue 1: Of Clans</span>
</h3>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>While the Aesir fought the Jotnar in the frozen wastelands of Scandinavia, a great many of the Alfar, elves, traveled more of Midgard, looking for trade, good taverns, and adventures of all sorts. Some settled in the British Isles. When Odin ordered the removal from Midgard of all other Realms' peoples and instituted a strict Non-Involvement Policy, several of the elves, especially those who had chosen the British Isles as home, completely ignored him, which was, by far, their favorite occupation. Those elves are long gone now, but the core of several Clans, both in Ireland and Scotland, still claim direct descendance from them. Most of the Alfar traits aren't there any more, but each Clan has one or two particularly strong gifts in the direct line.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>These are the Scottish Clans of Alfar descent and their gifts:</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The Baird Clan runs strongly towards the Bardic gifts: master creators of something-from-nothing of all sorts, be it tales, artwork, artificers, engineering or music; the ability to speak with birds of better-than-average intelligence – resulting in a treaty with the eagles that dwelt near the clan lands; and a marked ability as “silver tongues” which has enabled them to talk their way out of nearly all of the usual trouble most Scottish clans are known for, despite being easily as involved in the doings of Scotland as even the most...busy of other clans.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Clan Bruce have an unusually high number of strategist-sorcerers, capable of using siedr to track lines of connection between people, places, and events that have already happened, to best deploy troops, start rumors that become historical fact, and create networks of people who have no reason to be connected yet are. The gift is evenly distributed among genders, although the traditional role of a female strategist-sorcerer was to manipulate diplomacy and politics, while the men tended toward battle plans. It's nothing a good General and a few Spymasters working together couldn't have done, but it's simply so much quicker and easier for the strategist-sorcerers. Because it's a subtle skill, many in the know believe Clan Bruce to have weakened the bloodline and lost the strongest powers. Nothing could be further from the truth, as the strongest in the Clan have been issuing warnings to others, telling them to stay under the radar, since WWI when the lines began to point to another great battle, since nobody wanted the line shattered. A few, select, members of Clan Bruce, most notably Robert the Bruce of historic fame, have had a tiny touch of foresight, not so strong as to be called seers, but prone to a nudge in the right direction at the right time and to lend faith and encouragement when all seems lost.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Drummond leans towards...disruption and chaos. Much to both their glory and their woe. Should a suitable and beneficial means of causing chaos (Caltrops to the English Cavalry! Marbles in the hall!) fail to present itself for too long a time, it tends to assert itself, loudly, in whatever way it can, historically resulting in Drummond men doing remarkably stupid things for no apparent reason. The women of Drummond, being by far more subtle than the men, have used this to be rather more influential on powerful spouses than many other Scotswomen can achieve, using their spouses to manage all of their political chaos for them, while keeping said men wrapped around their fingers.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The clan of Dunbar, all told, would probably be the most boring of the Alfar clans, were it not for a few wise, if eventually hilarious, decisions. Dunbar's gift is agriculture and husbandry. Yes it's as boring as it sounds. They have a knack for animals and growing things, aiding their growth, speaking with them, knowing what they need and how to provide it best. The direct line of Dunbar grows the largest, healthiest, most succulent crops, breeds the strongest, healthiest, and most intelligent livestock, horses, and hounds, and “trains” their horses and hounds more thoroughly and effectively than any others. However, through “Black Agnes,” Countess Dunbar, daughter of Thomas Randolph, the nephew of Robert the Bruce, the Daughters Of Dunbar also have access to the lower levels of the Bruce gift, as well as a remarkably strong tendency to be appallingly stubborn, problematically quick witted, brazen, "boisterous, brawling wenches" beyond even the norm for Scotswomen.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>MacBain's primary gift is a druidic form of semi-shape-shifting, spirit-shifting, as it were, binding the soul to the essence of an animal, often wolves, bears or great cats, and gaining both physical and mental benefits and attributes from that animal: denser bones, more efficient muscles, sharper teeth and nails, better endurance and/or speed, tougher skin, better senses, instincts more closely tied to the animal's but able to be overridden by the mind, etc.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>MacGillivray is particularly full of Kitchen Witches, which is to say, people who can mystically make five potatoes, a head of cabbage, and a bit of chicken bone feed twenty men full, or ten MacBain shifters, or Steve, Bucky, Thor, and Jane (who, when she remembers to eat, can easily put away as much as the enhanced Avengers do.) Such food also tends to be a mild all-around anti-toxin, anti-venom and antidote, as well as speeding healing and recovery, and mildly relaxant, as if one had just drunk a pint of ale.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Clan MacKay, on the northernmost coast of the main part of Scotland, are primarily elemental water masters, sometimes to the point of being capable of limited shape shifting to sea mammals, but always great sailors, swimmers, and fishermen, even when their siedr is weak. The folklore of Selkies comes from the strongest gifts within Clan MacKay.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>MacNicol contains primarily bainsidhes, people with a strong gift for siedr and a wail that can be heard for miles and at shorter range, usually somewhere less than a quarter-mile, can be lethal to non-bainsidhes. This is where bainsidhes as a portent of doom in folklore have come from, “If you hear a bainshide crying (sometimes 'singing'), someone will die, if you see a bainsidhe crying, you will die.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Clan Macrae's gift is what they call “Shadow calling”: the ability to call and control semi-tangible, animate shadows, usually hunting types like wolves &amp; hounds or the great cats, some of which are usually large enough to ride, and they, with anything or anyone they carry can "jump" from shadow to shadow and through things, moving VERY quickly, but are real enough when they strike. A full Hunt, with all the Shadow Callers of Macrae, is only summoned in times of dire need for, or when extreme vengeance is demanded by the morals and sensibilities of, all of the Scottish Clans, both Alfar descendants and pure human. The Huntsman of folklore is the strongest Caller currently alive, and usually either the Clan Chief or next in line.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Clan Ogilvie, frankly, SHOULD be populated entirely by spies, as their gift is best described as “these are not the droids you are looking for.” Some would call it low-level illusions, but it is really as simple as encouraging the mind of others to see only and exactly what they expect to see. However, partially due to the social mores of the time, instead of spywork, the Ogilvie men went to one morally appropriate war after another, often standing just behind a person of import, and living up to the Clan Motto: “To the end.” The ultimate supporting characters, they frequently sacrificed themselves to save the life of the “Hero” of the story. The Ogilvie women, however, being accorded on account of their femininity no honor at all in most of European history, had no honor or reputation to maintain and gleefully became spymasters of renown.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Ruthven is the only clan whose gift is also directly a curse. The Ruthven Line gives off a passive aura influencing those around them to favor them, quietly whispering “like me, like me, like me...” in the back of their minds, the stronger gifteds can choose to turn the “volume” and “tone” of this aura up or down whispering to screaming “don't hate me,” “like me,” “I'm your faaavoriteee,” or “LOVE ME.” However, the influence wears off over time spent outside the aura, and the longer, louder, and higher the tone of the aura's use, the farther and faster the other direction it will go, as was discovered by less-than noble John Ruthven, Third Earl of Gowrie, who returned home from Padua University in 1600, having been accused of practicing Black Magic, believed by many of those who are aware of the Alfar lines to have been caused by using his gift to coerce otherwise unwilling women into his bed and stoke fervor for him among the women of the town, only to be murdered along with his brother Alexander in their townhome, convicted of treason post mortem, and the entire family stripped of lands and titles until the early 20</span>
  <span>th</span>
  <span> century. The other clan lines would be wary of all of Ruthven were it not for the fact that the Ruthven gift appears not to work on other Alfar descendants.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>For Urquhart, the most common of these gifts is the Alfar version of All Speak, which, while being mutually exclusive with the Aesir version, allows them to learn, to fluency, any language they are exposed to within a handful of minutes listening to conversation or reading any extant text in that language.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Clan Wallace breeds large men, even when the Alfar blood is thin enough not to have any noticeable effects. This is amplified in the clan's warriors when they prepare for battle, even the weakest of the blood appearing larger and the strongest of the line actually changing size in the moments before meeting battle. The legends of great Celt warrior heroes 'warping' and becoming massive berserkers that cannot be reasoned with until they sate the need for battle comes from witnessing a particularly strong Wallace descendant. In actuality, you can reason with an enlarged Wallace, just not easily and you will have to fight to keep said Wallace still while you do. While most picture the males of the Clan being this way, the women have the ability as well, often with finer control over the appearance of size while not engaging in a physical conflict. Anyone who ever got scolded by a five nothing Scotswoman and felt like they were towered over probably pissed off a long distant female relation to Clan Wallace. (For the love of all you consider holy, do not EVER attempt to “reason” with a Wallace woman who is enraged enough to have changed size, you will only anger them further and extend your agony, especially if harm to her children was in any way involved in her enragement. The only weeping will be over the rug your intestines will have messed.)</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>Before the Massacre at Glencoe, Clan MacDonald counted among the Alfar Clans of Scotland, however, all the Alfar bloodline, and the gifted ones died there. The bloodline and their gift are gone. Ironically, they were the seers, but as the limitation on all of them was that they couldn't see their own deaths, and all died the same way on the same day... no one saw it coming.</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<hr/>
<h3>
  <span>Prologue 2: The Beginnings of a Headache</span>
</h3>
<p>
  <span>Agent Ciara Harrow sat in the back of the black SUV Agent Hammond pushed her into and breathed a sigh of relief as they pulled away from the mansion. She'd had year-long undercover assignments with the IRA that were less migraine inducing than this 8-month long one with a damned gun runner. She was so ready to be done with this thrice-damned op, done with Barra Macbain and his arms deals, done with red-black-and-white plaid covering everything, and if she never had to listen to, never mind pretend to like, crappy metal renditions of perfectly good traditional Scot folk songs, it would be too soon. She was so very ready to fake the death of her cover identity, write the damned report (in triplicate), shower off Barra Macbain's oh-so-suave stink, order Chinese food and be fuckin done.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Her tongue felt like it had forgotten how to speak anything but Gaelic.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She was supposed to have been on leave dammit. But Noooooo, they HAD to have a woman fluent in Gaelic to go under cover immediately...and nobody else spoke Gaelic near as well as Ciara did. She hoped her next assignment required her to speak Russian... or Italian. Anything but Gaelic and Celtic, really, she wasn't at all picky. Her head thunked against the headrest as she mentally listed off all the things she never wanted to do again because of this one assignment. It was a loooong list. It started with “Scottish men” and ended with “wear red plaid”.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She had just begun mentally writing her resignation letter, again, “just in case” another assignment like this one came up, when the SUV slowed to a stop at a red light, the door across from her opened and admitted a large, leather-clad, one-eyed black man. Ciara flopped her head to the side, letting her auburn hair fall into her eyes, and looked tiredly up at Nick Fury.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Hey, Unca Mick.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Unca Mick, huh? You haven't called me that since you were six. Keep that up and other agents are going to start calling Director Nicholas J. Fury 'Unca Mick' and then I'll have to assign every one of you Barton clean-up duty."</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Ciara shrugged, “Eh, could be worse.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Worse?” Fury snorted and raised one skeptical brow, “What's worse than Barton duty?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Another 8 month long stint undercover with a lunatic More-Scottish-Than-You illegal arms dealer.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“That bad, huh? I was going to ask, but I'll wait for the report.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Never. Again.” she insisted. “I don't even want to look at plaid that contains red for at least another two years, never mind doing this whole ….fucknugget shit storm of an assignment again. Please, please, please, tell me I get to actually take a leave now?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Debrief, file the reports, and report to Medical for your massively overdue physical, and then you get a mandatory 3 weeks leave. And stop pouting at me. Just because you're the only one that has </span>
  <em>
    <span>ever</span>
  </em>
  <span> worked for does not mean that you need to use it all the time.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Yay! Leeeeave! I </span>
  <em>
    <span>miss</span>
  </em>
  <span> being on leave,” Ciara cheered tiredly.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Fury snorted and rolled his eye, “Debrief and physical first, Agent. Get some sleep on the flight.” He got out at the next stop light with a quiet, “Good work.” and disappeared into the crowds.</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ciara was half an hour into her physical when the doctor came in, befuddled, reading her chart.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Agent Harrow?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“That's me.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“It says here that you had an IUD put in place...18 months ago?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Yep.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Did you at any point have it taken out?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Um, noooo?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I see...well it appears to have fallen out at some point.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“What?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“And, congratulations, you're about seven weeks pregnant.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“WHAT?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>An hour later, Fury hung up his office telephone, his ears still ringing with Gaelic cursing, and buried his face in his hands. “Hill! I need you to arrange for Agent Harrow to have the next two months on leave followed by desk duty for the next year or so. And plan for her maternity leave. And block any incoming calls from her on all of my phones for the next week. Send her chocolate. A lot of chocolate.”</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>There are headcanons for Irish-Alfar clans and Rroma-Alfar clans, but I'd fall down a rabbit hole of doom trying to formulate that properly. If you want to play with it, go ahead. Bear in mind that All of the clan facts listed here are based on actual history and lore of the clans, just given a mystical slant, so when you build an Alfar-clan for playing in the sandbox, keep to the same premise.</p>
<p>An IUD is a birth control device set inside the uterus. It can keep it's effectiveness for years without the hormonal imbalances or the constant upkeep of other methods. For most people, they are fine and have no significant side effects or hazards. Now. Historically... early ones came with a lot of infections, accidental imbedding into the wall of the uterus (and thus permanent scarring which could lead to permanent infertility), and yes, falling out when they counter-balanced for the imbedding too far. Medical research is not a pleasant place for women, historically. The issues with IUDs have been fixed, but getting there was...yeah.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. The First Mission (Or: Fury Needs A Drink)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>It Begins, as all things do, with a bang.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Adult agenty people use some not-very-creative language of the offensive variety.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>“I can't take this assignment.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Assistant Director Hill looked up towards the voice at her office door, where Ciara Harrow waved a file at her, and waved the agent towards a seat. “Why can't you take the assignment?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“It's a 48 hour op, out of country, radio silence. I have twin 18 month old boys, and my only living relative just moved into an assisted living facility. In Scotland. Mom has early-onset Alzheimer's. I can't take the assignment.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Hill sighed, they needed a field-qualified agent on the ground who was fluent in Irish and Gaelic, and the paltry few SHEILD had were ...otherwise occupied. “Where are the boys now?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“In the on-site daycare down on 12, but Agent Sams says I can only have them there for one eight hour shift per day.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Go home. Pack your go-bag, pack everything the boys might need in 48 hours, get back here. I'll arrange something for the boys. We need you on this op or I wouldn't have allowed for you to be called up for it. Strike Team Delta are already assigned a concurrent mission elsewhere, Mockingbird and Hunter are out on Medical, and nobody else is field qualified. Go, get it done, get back as quickly as possible.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes, Ma'am,” Ciara stood quickly, and left with a worried look, and Maria Hill groaned quietly to herself.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Maria hated bureaucratic bullshit, and Agent Sams thrived on it.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>::Why did we put that imbecile in charge of the day care center, again? ...Oh, right, no one actually wanted to deal with her being in Admin. UGH.::</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The Assistant Director dropped her pen onto her desk, closed the file she was working on, and dropped her head onto her desk, and recited the Serenity Prayer quietly to herself...in Latin... aaand then in Greek... and, once more, in Russian, just for good measure. Then, mostly in the hopes that some higher power could keep her from murdering Agent Sams, she picked up her phone and called Fury... and Coulson, because overkill is almost never </span>
  <em>
    <span>actually</span>
  </em>
  <span> a bad thing...right?</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Hey, Nat?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“What, Barton?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“You know how I was running a couple minutes early and I said I'd be right behind you?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“... Barton.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeeeah, tell the pilot to hold up. I got something to take care of.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“...What?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“There's a couple of toddlers jabbering in - </span>
  <em>
    <span>is that Gaelic?</span>
  </em>
  <span> Yep, Gaelic - riding the elevator unsupervised in someone's trash bin and a drawer from a file cabinet, surrounded by what looks like wrappers from Agent Barlow's chocolate stash. I'm taking them down to daycare, see if they're missing some boys.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Clint... The elevator is operated by retinal scan.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes, yes it is.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“How did toddlers get ON the elevator?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I have no idea.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“...The pilot will wait. Oh, hey, if there's any more of Barlow's stash that they haven't eaten yet, bring me some.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>After a short conference call with Fury and Coulson, Hill quickly called Agent May down in Admin to get whatever red tape Agent Sams might insist on to allow the Harrow twins to stay in child care until their mother got back from her mission dealt with before that officious twit of a woman could even mention it, while Coulson and Fury headed down to deal with Sams directly.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Agent Sams was enjoying a cup of coffee in the sacred quietude of nap time when the front doors opened to admit...very nearly the last people she expected to see ever walk into the child care center. She promptly spilled half of her very hot coffee down her shirt in her hurry to stand.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Director Fury! Agent Coulson! Sirs! Ah, excuse me,” she rushed, as she hastily scrubbed at her shirt with a napkin, “A-ah, what brings you down here?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“We're here about Colin and Caddell Harrow, Agent Sams,” Fury stated calmly, “I understand there's a ...problem with children staying here while their parents are on assignments lasting longer than 8 hours?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Ah, yes, sir, the regulations clearly state that...”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I'm sorry, Agent Sams,” Coulson interrupted, “But do you pull out one cot for each child currently present at nap times?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Uhm, yes, sir, as state regulations requi-” Agent Sams seemed bound to be interrupted today.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Fury this time, “Agent Sams, where </span>
  <em>
    <span>are</span>
  </em>
  <span> Colin and Caddell Harrow?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“It's nap time, sir, they're in their cots right... Oh. Well, the entire place has alarms should any of the doors open without proper card access, they must be here somewhere...” she quickly checked the bathrooms, and then the cabinets, under desks...even the toy boxes. “They couldn't have gotten out, the alarms would have been triggered...”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Suddenly, a loud alarm DID go off, causing Sams to crack her head on the cabinet she was checking, muttering a curse under her breath, as Agent Barton strolled through the front doors, go bag and bow case over his shoulder and a chocolate-covered toddler on each hip.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Coulson's hand came up to his mouth, as his other crossed his chest, and he cleared his throat. “Agent Barton,” he asked, “Aren't you supposed to be on a quinjet over the Atlantic right now?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Absolutely, Phil,” Clint grinned, any pretense of professionalism lost in the presence of children, “But on my way to the quinjet – on time, actually - I found these two bairns on the 19th floor, riding the elevator unsupervised in a trash can and a metal filing cabinet drawer, eating Barlow's chocolate stash. Thought I'd bring them here and see if they were missing. Nat's holding the 'jet for me.” He carefully lowered the boys, one at a time, over the half-door divider, with a gentle hair-ruffle. “Bí go maith, buachaillí,” Barton told them, as he turned to hurry back to the 'jet.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Halfway to the door, he stopped and turned back, digging suddenly in a pocket, “Oh, Sams! One of the boys had...where'd it go...ah! This!” He handed Agent Sams' SHEILD security card back to her. “Might want to secure that a bit better. BYE!” Clint bolted for the door as Fury and Coulson turned identical raised-eyebrow-of-disbelief looks at Agent Sams.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Over the course of the next hour:</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Agent Sams was suspended.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Agent Sitwell tripped over a random filing drawer in the hallway outside of the 19th floor elevator, landed on and broke a random empty office trash can, sprained his knee and gave himself a concussion, requiring a trip to Medical and sparing two baby-agents an excessively long-winded lecture on proper report writing format.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Agent O'Connor returned to his office on the 15th floor from a meeting to find his paper shredder on the floor, the bag empty off to the side, shreds everywhere, but no trashcan. Maintenance has no idea what occurred but will send him a new bin.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Agent Barlow returned to her 17th floor office from lunch to find files strewn all over the floor and the bottom drawer of her filing cabinet missing...along with her chocolate stash that she kept in the hollow under the bottom drawer. Her three month supply of truffles that she brought back from her last mission in Belgium, THAT chocolate stash, was missing. Maintenance has no idea what happened, but they will gladly bring her a new drawer or a new cabinet if a drawer to her model of cabinet cannot be found. Sadly, they can do nothing about the missing chocolate stash.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Agent Coulson reshuffled agent assignments to put someone in charge of the on-site child care for the duration of Sams' suspension.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Director Fury read twelve Dr. Seuss books, with allllll the voices, to nine 1-through-5 year olds, two freshly-cleaned, strawberry blonde 18month olds perched snugly on his lap, as they all waited for someone to come cover Agent Sams' shift.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Natasha Romanov shared some truly excellent Belgian chocolate truffles with her partner and their pilot, making pornographic noises all the while. Much to the consternation of flight control and mission control, as all three left their coms wide open.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Agent Danely arrives to replace Sams and Fury leaves, just in time for Agent Harrow to return with everything her twins will need during her mission and run for her flight out, completely unaware of any of the past hours' events.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh, God, Clint, this is so. Fucking. GOOOOD.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“MMM, I know. Fuck. Tastes delicious.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Goddamn, I need more. Gimme another.”</span>
</p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Caddell and Colin Harrow were, indeed, very good boys... for Director Fury. Not so much for anybody else. Agent Danely found them to be charming little devils, the sweetest little boys, gentle and surprisingly courteous for their age, with wicked little grins, and a penchant for all sorts of mostly-harmless mischief. They didn't run off again during her shift, which closed out at 7:30 PM with only the two of them left when night shift came in, but they were chaos incarnate, and problematically good at team work. One would distract her while the other got into whatever it was they wanted, usually snacks, and hid it away for them both to devour later, or they would wait till the other children had her busy, and then work together to lift heavy things, or reach difficult places.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Aware of the shenanigans the two boys pulled earlier in the day, Danely called Maintenance and had them put in extra cameras, called over to SCI-Div and got someone to bring her tracker ankle bracelets with an alarm should they be removed, toddler sized house-arrest anklets, really, but tracking all of their movements, not just outside of the place they were supposed to be, there was some incredulity, and SCI-Div wanted to verify that it was authorized, but Agent Coulson assured them it was “a reasonable request, considering...” and left the reasons unsaid. Everything was just finished when night shift arrived at 7:00 PM, and Agent Danely sat down with them while the boys ate their dinners and explained the events of the day, the new security measures, and that the twins would be with them for another 42 hours or so. Then Danely was gone and two half-trained baby agents were left with two devious toddlers.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sweetness, innocence, and light prevailed ...for about 45 minutes. They even got into their pajamas and went to bed at exactly 8:00 without a fuss! Agent Johnston and Agent Wilks began to think that, well, if all that DID happen today, then they clearly tired themselves out... And then the lights were turned off, the boys lying quietly in their cribs, Agent Wilks went to the cafeteria to get the agents their dinner, Agent Johnston made himself some coffee and went to the bathroom, checking the trackers on the monitor before getting up and after returning to the desk, and sat back to play some Peggle on his phone.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Agent 13 had been writing this mission report for hours, after spending more hours verbally debriefing. She still had several pages left to go when she decided to break for some food, since she was obviously going to be in the office for some time yet. At 8:46, she walked into the cafeteria to find it empty of people, plenty of dinner foods, and almost no desserts. A sudden flash of color out among the tables drew her eye. Quietly, she set her dinner tray down, drew her sidearm, and stalked slowly around the tables till she could see the source. Moving as silently as she could, Carter made her way to the only table in the room with an underside not readily visible from any of the entrances or the food counters, stopped and stared, stupefied. Two children's blankets pulled over the low-backed chairs pushed in under the table shielded the sides from view, and one tiny, barefoot peeked out from underneath. Sharon blinked rapidly, shook herself, and quickly holstered her weapon. Then, moving as silently as before, she crept up next to the table, knelt down and peeked around the blanket.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>There, in monster hooded pajamas, were two tiny little boys, surrounded by little light-up toys, alphabet magnets, and what appeared to be two nerf swords, gleefully working their way through – she counted plates – their sixth desserts, assuming they'd shared equally. Taking a deep breath and drawing on every memory she had of dealing with small children, Sharon was careful to keep her voice quiet but chipper.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Hey, guys, this looks like a pretty awesome party. Can I join you?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>BlueMonster bit his lower lip and nodded, smiling coyly at her. GreenMonster grinned brightly and offered her his half-eaten cookie.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh! That's very generous of you,” Sharon grinned, “but why don't you finish that cookie and I'll eat this cookie?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>An accord settled, Sharon scooched as much under the table as she could, and ate a cookie while the boys finished the desserts they were eating.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I'm Sharon, what are your names?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>BlueMonster whispered, “Caddell,” and hid his face briefly before going back to his brownie.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>GreenMonster had no such shyness, and barely remembered to swallow his bite of cookie before announcing proudly that he was Colin, and they were one-anda-half years old, and their Mam was workin' and people called her “Agent Harrow” but her name was Ciara, not “Agent.” He didn't know why they called her that, when it wasn't her name.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>If Agent Carter had to call on all of her best spy-training to keep a straight face, no one ever needed to know.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Ah, well, if your ma is working, then you two are probably supposed to be in child care, where someone can make sure you're safe till she gets back, right? Why don't we clean up a little bit and I'll get you and all your toys back to where you're supposed to be, and you can have the rest of this party there, alright?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The Monsters proved surprisingly helpful at getting all the dishes where they were supposed to go, their toys gathered up and bundled into the blankets, and order (mostly) restored. Sharon had them picked up and returned to day care in no time at all, though she pretended not to notice the brownies and cookies they'd snuck into their things.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Agents Johnston and Wilks looked up at Agent 13, holding their charges and two bundled blankets in shock for a moment, before triple-checking that the monitors and alarms all still showed both boys still in their beds.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Agent 13, ma'am,” Johnston whimpered, Wilks was pale and looking like she'd forgotten how to speak, “Agent Danely had several new security features put in today to ...ah...prevent further escapes... I ah...I don't know how they got out. O-or why all of the monitors still show them in the cribs... they, ah, they went to bed an hour ago, and laid down quietly....I thought they were asleep when I went to the bathroom, and the monitors never showed them moving.... pleasedon'thaveusfired.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Sharon bit her lips and nodded, “So they've done this before?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes, Ma'am, earlier today, Ma'am. Agent Sams was suspended for allowing them to steal her security badge and failing to notice their escape, Ma'am. That's why all the new cameras and the anklet trackers.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“They're not wearing anklet trackers, Agent.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“They were when they went to bed, ma'am.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“...I see. I promised them that they could finish their blanket fort party down here, why don't we let them do that and one of you can sit with them while we investigate, and I will go and pull the security footage and I will make sure the faulty equipment and the sneakiness of certain monsters is noted in the report.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Agent Wilks gladly helped the boys build an even better blanket fort and sat with them in it, while Johnston located the trackers in their cribs, on their Bucky and Cap bears' ankles, and Carter discovered the “I” magnet on the alarm sensor on the front door, though no one could figure how they GOT it way up there...</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Agent Carter returned to her office at 9:32 PM, looked down at the report she had been writing, then at the magnet in her hand and sighed. She'd already debriefed on the mission anyway, the report could wait, she had a feeling that a report on the escapes of a particular pair of twins was significantly more time-sensitive. Fifteen minutes after pulling up the security feeds from that evening, Sharon knew this report was more time-sensitive, and started the computer pulling the rest of the feeds from today.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>A great many things happened early the next morning, in a very short period of time.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Strike Team Delta's mission wrapped up significantly faster than expected. Apparently, they were operating under the assumption that if you just used enough explosives the </span>
  <em>
    <span>first</span>
  </em>
  <span> time, there was no need for a Plan B to double the explosives. They were on their way home 14 hours after they left, with 3 hours of flight time ahead of them.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>At 6:30 AM, Agent Danely arrived to find two toddlers sleeping in a blanket fort in the middle of the play area, trackers secure on their ankles, and two Level 2 agents looking like they'd spent the night in a foxhole, waiting for the next mortar to hit.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Between 6:30 and 7:00, twelve other preschool aged children arrived, and two toddlers in monster pajamas went missing, leaving their trackers behind, somehow, on the desk, and a very harried Agent Danely couldn't figure out who to call.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>At 7:02, Director Fury entered his office to find a file and a flash drive waiting on his desk. An attached sticky note read:</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Upon review of the security footage from the last 24 hours of Agent Harrow's twins, I am strongly recommending remedial training for all agents in the footage enclosed, excepting Agents Barton, Danely, Johnston, and Wilks, who did everything they could reasonably be expected to do to deal with the problem. Full report and my recommendation for a review of the security of the Child Care Center enclosed. - Agent 13”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Fury groaned, poured himself an unusually large cup of coffee, plugged the flash drive in and opened Carter's report. Ten minutes later, his PA nearly fell out of his seat when Fury's voice boomed through the door, “LOOK DOWN, YOU INCOMPETENT JACKASSES! OH, MY FUCKING GOD. JACKSON! GET HILL IN MY OFFICE, NOW!”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Agent Jackson, personal assistant to Director Fury, hurried to comply.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>At 7:26, Agent Melinda May was very late walking in the front doors, but the lines in Starbucks were hell and she refused to drink the swill the Admin office lounge claimed was coffee. She also suspected someone had swapped in Decaf again. If she found out who did, she'd sign them up for one of Romanov's remedial combat training classes. Mostly because she didn't want to deal with investigative and review boards for shooting a fellow agent in the office. Even if they would decide it was justified. (And they would. The Coffee Wars were still recent enough in everyone's memory that 98% of SHEILD would determine someone mucking with the coffee sources absolutely deserving of being shot on sight. Still, there would be an investigation, and it would screw with everyone's week.)</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Working her way through the Admin Office's cubicle maze towards the pile of files masquerading as her desk, May noticed several unusual things. Agent Barley's granola bars had gone missing, someone had stolen all of Agent Lavelle's juice boxes... before noon, and Agent Corries' impressive candy jar was completely empty and it wasn't even 9AM yet. By the time she got all the way back to her desk, Agent May was already on the alert for things out of place, the appearance of a small green-sleeved arm reaching out from under her desk to snatch a fallen juicebox didn't even surprise her, especially not after yesterday's shenanigans.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>With an eye roll for her clueless colleagues, she calmly went to her desk, turned on her computer and sat down, pretending not to notice the boys but being very careful not to accidentally kick them. Pulling up the intra-base memo program, and picking up her office phone, she typed up an action plan with one hand for all future escapes, including the lock down of unsafe zones like SCI-Div and the Armory, and called Phil with the other, cradling the handset between her ear and shoulder so she could sneak a photo of the monsters under her desk with her cell phone.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Good morning, Phil. I just wanted to confirm that Strike Team Delta is on their way back safe?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“They should be landing shortly. What do you need?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Any trips to Medical needed?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“... None that Barton won't be allowed to get away with escaping. He appears not to have broken anything when he fell off a building this time. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Why?”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Coulson's phone pinged with a text message. From May.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh, I just need you to send them my way as soon as possible. I seem to have recovered some things I'd like them to collect.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Phil opened the message and had to force himself not to facepalm. At least someone competent had eyes on the monsters. “I will make sure they get to you before heading to debrief. Get the names of everyone in your office who was there before you today. Remedial training all around.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“It will be in your email within the hour. As will an action plan, for your approval, to handle any further occurrences.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Thank you. I'll have Barton and Romanov report to you as soon as they land.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Are they really...?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Yup.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Aand no one...?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Not a mother-fuckin one.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“What is this? Metal Gear Solid? Snake wasn't as effective and he's supposedly a trained operative!”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Agent 13 recommended remedial training for all of them.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I'll say. Remedial training for the whole damned building. Want me to call the Academy and get them working on something effective that will also be legal?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Make it their final project. Whoever comes up with a solution that works and doesn't hurt the boys gets an A. Teamwork encouraged.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Agent Coulson knocked briefly, and stuck his head in the door at Hill and Fury, “Director?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Cheese, come in. We were just watching footage of the Harrow twins' two escapes yesterday.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Ah, this is the right time then. Agent May just submitted an action plan for dealing with further escapes after finding the boys under her desk when she got in this morning. I've included the names of her co-workers who somehow missed a pair of toddlers stealing their snack stashes to be sent for remedial training.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Fury read the plan over, while Coulson and Hill shouted at the screen like they were watching football and their team was losing...badly.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Approved. Send the plan out, get a list of every person we have footage of failing to catch and return the boys, send them all to remedial training.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Romanov and Barton to run the training?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Hell yes. Make sure Sitwell's in the class too. He may not have walked by the twins, but he managed to trip on their toys, and agents of his level should damned well know to look DOWN.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Hi, boys! Remember me? My friend NatMonster and I are going to go play in the gym, and we wanted to know if a BlueMonster and a GreenMonster could join us. Wanna come with?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Two pairs of little hands immediately reached out from under Agent May's desk.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Nat smirked, “I think that's a yes.”</span>
</p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>"In the event of a Code Chartreuse, all labs, weapons testing areas, gun ranges, armories, locker rooms, and chemical storage areas, including but not limited to Janitors' closets, are to immediately go to full lockdown. All beverages, snacks, and candies are to be either secured behind a manual lock and key or kept in direct line-of-sight or in hand at all times; any losses of such items, especially during a Code Chartreuse, will not be reimbursed or replaced by SHIELD. All agents not otherwise occupied with a Priority 2 or better, time sensitive, and/or urgent task are to immediately stop what they are doing, search and secure their floor. Security and Strike teams will secure their floors and then search and secure all stairwells, elevators, and gyms, before proceeding to the cafeteria."</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>---</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The NatMonster had gone half an hour earlier to return the boy's pajamas, the twins having been changed to day clothes as soon as a baby agent could be sent to the child care to collect some of their things. The baby agent offered to take the pajamas back, but Nat said she had another mission to take care of anyway.</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>---</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Sir?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Phil,” Fury sighed, wondering what it was this time.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“I just finished debriefing Danely, Johnston, and Wilks.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Are we giving agents in the Child Care hazard pay?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“....Probably not.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“We should be. Also, Johnston and Wilks will probably require a few days of leave. And we might need to consider altering the security clearance increase algorithms so that time in the Child Care, particularly overnights with the Harrow twins, counts as field experience.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>Fury couldn't decide between laughing, groaning, and burying his face in his hands. He'd met the twins, knew their mother when she was the same age as the twins, Phil was probably right. “See to it. And give May a bonus for the action plan.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes, Sir.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>As Phil left, Nick had to wonder if he could get the “Not My Circus” award for Harrow Twins stunts... He could really use a good scotch right now.</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>Agents Rumlow and Rollins walked down the hall towards the gym they considered theirs, talking loudly and checking their emails. The rest of their team had gone straight to the cafeteria as soon as they landed, home from their latest assignment.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“What the fuck is with this memo about a Code Chartreuse? Coupl'a kids go wandering and we're supposed to go into lockdown?” Rollins looked scandalized.</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Some agents can't do their fuckin job and mind some damned brats, so it becomes everybody's fuckin problem. Keep reading, they want us doing searches.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We're STRIKE. Why are they wasting STRIKE on </span>
  <em>
    <span>babysitting</span>
  </em>
  <span>?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fuck if I know, someone's got a burr up their ass.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>In the gym, all play (training) suddenly stopped as a pair of grey eyes, a pair of blue eyes, and a pair of green eyes all narrowed dangerously at the closed door to the hallway, voices coming through it, loud and clear. Sharing a glance and matching smirks, Caddell hid behind Clint's legs while Colin climbed to the high point nearest the door and perched with the stick Clint had been teaching them sword fighting with like a gargoyle about to attack, glaring hard at the door that swung open sharply as Rumlow and Rollins strode into the room, stopped and stared.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The fu-?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Barton? They got you on babysitting duty, now? At least they found something you're good for, besides falling off buildings. Why is the brat in our gym?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>Caddell burst, theatrically, into vociferous tears, startling both STRIKE agents, roughly 1.2 seconds before Colin took a flying leap from his hiding spot, swinging the stick down as he came, cracking Rumlow in the shoulder and rolling as he landed on the mats...just like Clint taught him not 10 minutes earlier.</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“SHIT!” Rumlow howled.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“...Because I was teaching them things like that,” Clint smirked, bending to pick Colin up, hefting the toddler to his hip.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“The Fuck, Barton? Can't keep your pets on a leash?” Rumlow leaned in to a grinning Colin, and glared, “Don't you know what happens to little brats who run with sticks? They lose an eye.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Colin glared back and shook his stick, threateningly, he thought.</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Where </span>
  <em>
    <span>is</span>
  </em>
  <span> NattieNat?” Rollins 'wondered' snidely, “Isn't it her job to keep small children with no manners or sense in line? I mean, that's why she's stuck with you, innit, Barton?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>Barton smirked as he bent to pick up Caddell, who was chewing on something, “She's, y'know, around. Somewhere. Catch you boys later.” Clint turned and sashayed, like a bloody runway model, from the gym, calling back over his shoulder, “Don't forget to go see Medical about that shoulder, Brock, wouldn't want it to get in the way of a mission, would we?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>A good bit down the hall, as the gym doors closed behind them, Clint paused and looked down at the twins on his hips, who were now both chewing on something.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What are you boys chewing on, then? Hmm?” He asked, setting them on their feet.</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>Calmly, but with a hint of pride, Caddell pulled from his shirt and placed in Clint's hands: one black leather wallet, one brown leather wallet, two security badges, a lighter, a pocket knife, 58 cents, and a half-empty packet of Monster brand caffeine gummies. Clint's jaw just about fell off, but he collected himself quickly.</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You little grifter! Wanna go find NatMonster and show her your prizes?” At Caddell's happy, emphatic nod, Clint helped him put everything (except the gummies, Clint made sure they did NOT keep those) back under his shirt. “Alright, I need to make a quick phone call, so I need one of you to hold my hand and the other to hold his hand, okay? Okay. Let's go find the NatMonster.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Coulson didn't even look up from the files in front of him as his phone rang, dealing with the Harrow twins incidents had put him behind on his paperwork. He hit the speaker button on his phone, “Coulson.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hi, Phil. I just wanted it noted that I did NOT give the toddlers caffeine. They stole it while I was dealing with a ...problem and had already eaten it before I knew they had it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>Phil promptly face-palmed, somehow knowing this was going to involve more paperwork, “...How do you know they had it, then?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I asked what they were chewing on and they handed me the contents of said problem's pockets, including a packet of caffeine gummies that was half empty.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Where did this occur?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Level 8 training gym, ending, oh, 2-4 minutes ago, starting 5ish, call it six, minutes before that.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I'll deal with it, but YOU get the paperwork.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes, Sir,” Clint sighed. He hated paperwork.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Where are you now?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We're going to go find the NatMonster and show her our prizes. Maybe get lunch in the caf.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Good, you do that. I'll go pull that security footage.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>Nick Fury returned to his office from another damned meeting with idiots to find a large bottle of vodka on his desk. A large bottle of top shelf, only-available-in-Russia, vodka, with a little red bow tied around it. Still sealed. He sighed and began to pour himself a glass. It wasn't the scotch he wanted, but it was still damned good, and if Romanov was buttering him up, he was probably going to need a glass or three already in him when he found out whatever happened this time.</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>He looked up at the knock on his door and rolled his eye as Coulson stuck his head in, “Dammit, what now?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“There's been another Harrow incident, sir. Barton was involved this time, though it wasn't actually his fault.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Barton AND the Harrow twins? This day just couldn't get any better, could it? I assume you're here to show me since you didn't just call.” Fury sighed, taking a drink as he settled into his chair. “Fine, come in, and show me what happened this time.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>Twelve minutes later, more than half of it spent staring in silence at the screen that had long since finished playing the video, Coulson looked tiredly over at Fury, "We're recruiting them as soon as legal, aren't we?"</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>"Yes, yes we are. Drink? Have a drink. You need a drink, and I need another."</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes, please.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>If you have received this email, it is because two 18 month old boys managed to get the better of you, either sneaking past you unnoticed, stealing from you, or doing something that resulted in your injury. As such, you are to report for remedial training in the 2</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>nd</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span> Floor Gym at 8:00AM every day beginning on Monday, until your trainer has deemed you passable. If you look at the list of recipients of this email, you will find yourself in extensive, good company. Agent Romanov will be teaching this round of remedial training. Do Not Be Late.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>Agent Jackson stuck his head into Director Fury's office. Cautiously, because the last few days had lead to quite a bit of yelling, and he had no idea what to expect. “Sir? You asked to be notified when Agent Harrow's jet was landing.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Good,” Fury didn't look up from the paperwork in front of him, “Send her to me directly, before debriefing or reports.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>Agent Harrow, as many agents do, checked her emails on her phone on the flight home and while walking in the halls of her home SHEILD base. By the time she was summoned to the Director's office, she'd already read about Code Chartreuse which, although it didn't </span>
  <em>
    <span>name</span>
  </em>
  <span> any children, filled her with dread and a feeling like she was being called to the principal's office, again. She was...rather familiar with being called to the principal's office, even if the school's football star absolutely deserved it. Every. Time.</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>She straightened her clothes, checked her hair in a bathroom mirror, and, reasonably satisfied, took herself off to Fury's office.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Good afternoon, Agent Jackson, I understand Director Fury would like to see me?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, yes, Agent Harrow just.... How are you so calm? No one is calm when Fury sends for them. Except maybe Coulson, but he's Coulson. So how are you calm?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh, that's easy. I just pretend I've been sent to the principal's office again for beating the crap out of the quarterback when he was harassing freshman girls. Again. It happened a lot, I beat him up a lot, and went to the principal's office a lot. Dad and the principal got to be on first-name basis within about a month.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Agent Jackson gulped, eyes wide. He was pretty sure this petite, unassuming woman might actually be as crazy as Barton. He hadn't thought that was possible. “Just, um, go on in. He's expecting you.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Agent Jackson needed a vacation.</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You asked to see me, Director?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>Fury closed the file he had in front of him and looked up, “Ciara, have a seat, I have some questions for you.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Agent Harrow closed the door behind her and took a seat across from the man she'd known her whole life, meeting his eye easily. “Is there a problem, Sir?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“A problem?” Fury snorted. “Depends on your definition. </span>
  <em>
    <span>What</span>
  </em>
  <span> have you been teaching those boys of yours?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Nothing excessively out of the ordinary, I think. I caught them climbing on top of the mantle a few months ago and started teaching them that and tumbling so that at least they'd be able to be safe about it. I may have started them on swords a bit earlier than I started with swords, mostly to give them an outlet for their focus and energy, and with my job and who their father is... starting some method of self defense early seemed wise. And Gaelic and Russian. A bit of kid-friendly science, here and there. Why?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Get comfortable,” Fury suggested, pulling out a mostly-empty bottle of Russian vodka, “I've got some footage to show you from the last couple of days.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>If the sounds coming from Fury's office when Coulson and Hill were there the other day sounded like their football team was losing horrifically, Jackson could tell that Agent Harrow's team was definitely winning... even if nothing she said was in English. And she cackled. Who the hell cackles? Besides villains...and Barton. Agent Jackson </span>
  <em>
    <span>definitely</span>
  </em>
  <span> needed a vacation.</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>SCI-Div always loved it when Agent Barton came to visit. He always had the best ideas... even though most of them wound up in the Manual later. He loved to feed their mad genius tendencies, and they loved him for it. He also had all the best gossip. So when he walked in that day, he had their immediate attention.</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I need a favor,” He said, “And I have $253.58 for whoever can do it for me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“...That's an </span>
  <em>
    <span>oddly</span>
  </em>
  <span> specific amount, Barton,” Dr. Gevard said curiously.</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah.... You know that email you all got about Code Chartreuse? A pair of 18 month old twin boys escaped daycare three times in the last 2 days, despite security and those ankle trackers Agent Danely asked you for. They then picked Rumlow and Rollins' pockets. The money is from that, and I thought I'd use it to get them something. You guys make the best of everything.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“....Rumlow and Rollins got their pockets picked by </span>
  <em>
    <span>babies</span>
  </em>
  <span> still in diapers?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yep.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Keep the money, that gossip is payment enough. What do you need?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Foam. Swords. Preferably rigid and durable on par with wood, but without the likelihood of causing injury. Can you make them claymores but sized waaay down so they're proportionate to a 2-and-a-bit foot tall person?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dr. Gevard grinned, anticipating more antics and juicy gossip. “I can do that within about a day. Do you want them colored or realistic?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Realistic, but with one hilt bright blue and the other electric green?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Come back tomorrow, I'll have them ready. I want the full story on these boys when you do.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Gladly, it's a pretty epic story.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>Clint was just getting on the elevator to go find Nat when the Code Chartreuse came over the PA. Rather than continuing looking for Nat, he hit the button for the 19</span>
  <span>th</span>
  <span> floor, heading straight to the Level 8 gym. He had a feeling.</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>The dual cries of “Clin! Clin!” upon his entry to the gym gave Clint's hunch credence. The boys he expected. The agent they sat on top of, who was trussed up with a jump rope and somebody's gym socks... not so much. Especially as the agent in question was neither security nor a high enough level to access the floor, let alone the gym.</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>Clint kept his tone light, no need to scare the twins just yet, “There you two are. People are looking for you. And what's this?”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“We wan' see you,” Caddell insisted.</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Little man no' s'pose be up here. S'pose' t'be on 6. Is </span>
  <em>
    <span>bad</span>
  </em>
  <span> t'go where don' belong,” Colin chimed in.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes, it is. And </span>
  <em>
    <span>you two</span>
  </em>
  <span> aren't supposed to be up here unless NatMonster or I bring you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>The pouts were killing him. One was bad enough, but both at once was brutal.</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Aw, pouts, no. Okay, here's the deal, I'm going to call someone to deal with 'little man' here, then we're gunna get you two back to child care. Your mom's coming home today; you don't want her to worry, do you? No, you don't. So we're going to get you back to child care, and you're going to stay there until your mom comes to get you. In return, I promise that if NatMonster and I are here, we will come get you to play up here for at least 2 hours every day. Okay? And I'll teach you to use the vent systems to get around the building for your second birthday present.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>With the twins mollified and pouts holstered, Clint called security, called off the Code Chartreuse, and got someone up to deal with... Clint checked his badge... Agent Daniels (Level 2, ComSCI...floor 6, exactly like the boys said... Coulson should probably hear about this.). As soon as security was there for Daniels, Clint gathered up the boys and took them back down to the child care center, making a mental note to find Agent Harrow and ask her to add him and Nat to the authorized list for the boys.</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>Coulson walked into Fury's office as he and Ciara finished watching the boys pick the STRIKE leaders' pockets and Barton sashay from the gym. Harrows was still giggling, and looked like she was in desperate need of air.</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Director, Agent Harrow,” Coulson nodded at both of them, pulling up another chair and handing Fury another flash drive. “Code Chartreuse has been called off. Clint found them. In the Level 8 gym. With Level 2 Agent Daniels from ComSCI, whom, apparently, they caught where he was not supposed to be, knew he wasn't supposed to be there, and managed to capture and restrain him with a jump rope and someone's gym socks. Barton is taking them back to child care, but he had to promise them that if he and Romanov are here, they'll spend 2 hours a day with the boys in the gym. He asked me to ask Agent Harrow here to add them to the authorized list in the boys' child care files. The flash drive is security footage of this escape, and Agent Daniels' capture.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>Fury sighed and facepalmed, as he loaded up the new footage, “Ciara, we need you in the field, but if I have to babysit the boys, </span>
  <em>
    <span>especially</span>
  </em>
  <span> in conjunction with Barton, who is, apparently, the </span>
  <em>
    <span>only agent we have</span>
  </em>
  <span> that the boys actually </span>
  <em>
    <span>like</span>
  </em>
  <span>... I'm going to need at least a bottle of single malt scotch a month.” Fury paused to consider his glass, “Better make it two bottles a month. Romanov's apology gift for the last couple of days didn't even last the full 48 hours.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ciara just resumed cackling.</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>Coulson looked thoughtfully at the screen and then back to Fury, “Should we just give the boys clearance for the elevators and Level 8 gym? That's where they want to go anyways, and we can't seem to keep them anywhere they don't want to be...”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“How did they know Agent Daniels is supposed to be on the 6</span>
  <span>th</span>
  <span> floor and isn't authorized for the 19</span>
  <span>th</span>
  <span> floor?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>Coulson groaned, “Apparently, they've been wandering the building a lot longer than this and have identified which faces belong where. Agent Sams either never noticed or never reported their going missing until we visited while they were gone.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fire her, put them in the system, see if SCI-Div can make a subdermal tracker for them to act as their security badge and retinal scans to get around the building, and modify the Code Chartreuse action plan to include a list of people to call to look for them. Make sure the three of us, Romanov, Barton, Carter, and May are on that list, whoever is in the building or closest to it at the time. And send Romanov to find out why Daniels was on 19. Bribe her with those Italian cookies she likes if you have to. And I had better damned well win the 'Not My Circus' award this month. Ciara, stop cackling and go debrief.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes, Sir,” Ciara giggled.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Bí go maith, buachaillí. - "Be good, boys." Internet translators, please correct me if you know better than google.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Ok, so, when she was somewhere between a year and 18 months old, we grown ups turned around from putting groceries away to find my niece on top of the mantle of the fireplace, talking to herself in the mirror. At 2 she climbed straight-legged up the front of the refrigerator to get to the cookies. At 3 she climbed the doorjamb to unlock the chain and escape, and regularly climbed trees that couldn't hold adult weight until she was too high for anyone to reach her, and then laughed at them trying to get her down. At 4 she climbed over the railing of the balcony at my mom's house and crouched on the down-stairs neighbors' roof to hiss angrily at passerby and got into the vents at her mom's work. She was entirely non-verbal until she was 5. At not quite 7, we were still cheering every word usage, and the lessening in frequency of escapes and escapades. We are heartily glad she was not a twin or the Harrow boys' seemingly improbable shenanigans would have been a terrifying reality. As it is, all the security guards at their church, her mom's work, and her school, know her on sight by name. I am really not stretching things that far with the abilities of the boys.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>I could totally see a spin-off of Maintenance emails and phone calls dealing with the aftermath of SHIELD (and Harrow Twins) shenanigans.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. The Terrible Two And the Terrible Twos</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Miscellaneous shenanigans in between Arcs.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>The boys' tartan is http://www.tartanfootprint.com/file/pic/photo/2013/02/9731159a1b46a35d6fc54f2fab2b718c.jpg</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Five and a half months later, Agent Ciara Harrow had gone on 14 overnight assignments, Colin and Caddell had captured 5 more people where they didn't belong, Building Security had decided the boys were their mascots, SCIDiv had all but adopted the boys, presenting them with new toys nearly every time they had gotten the better of Strike, Specialist, or Field agents, 90% of Strike teams, Specialists and Field agents officially hated the boys, and Fury was dreading the boys' approaching birthday the next week. Agent Barton had been dubbed “Unca Clin'” by the twins and they appeared to regard Agent Romanov as a crazy but much beloved aunt, though they only referred to her as “NatMonster.” Anyone who didn't think that a birthday for the unholy miniature tyrants that claimed Barton and Romanov as their uncle and aunt and was in the pockets of Security and SCIDiv was a concept that should fill one with terror was clearly in need of a psych eval.</p>
<p>Preparing for the fast-approaching Doom Day, Fury had called all hands on deck, canceled all leaves the next week, most especially on the Day, hounded Maintenance into upping security across the building, and put all missions not already active on hold until June 18th. He'd also stocked up on scotch for Coulson and himself, and vodka for Hill. Lord knew they would need it. He was missing something, he knew it. He looked up from his half-prostrate position in his desk chair, which surely was not intended to lean back quite that far, when Phil knocked and stuck his head in.</p>
<p>“Sir?”</p>
<p>“Phil. PLEASE save me from next week. Disaster in the Sandbox? Helicarrier having problems? Anything that needs me somewhere...away?”</p>
<p>“No, sorry, not yet. I'm sure something will come up, though the twins would be most disappointed if Unca Mick misses the party.”</p>
<p>“Damn. You just had to play the Unca Mick card, didn't you?”</p>
<p>“Yes, Sir. If I have to be there, so do you.  Maria would kill you for ditching her there, and then I would have to train a new Director.”</p>
<p>Fury sighed wearily. “What did you need?”</p>
<p>“You'll like it,” Phil smiled at his friend, “I have a comprehensive list of authorized presents anyone, including SCIDiv may give the boys, and a list of banned presents, including most of SCIDiv's proposed presents.”</p>
<p>“...What did the flaming imbeciles try to give them now?”</p>
<p>“Child sized climbing gear, including all tools necessary for scaling and entering office buildings, an automated lock pick version of a Leatherman, usable for all types of locks, electronic or otherwise, contact paralytic paintball guns, and 'child friendly explosives'. Among other things.”</p>
<p>Fury stared at Phil for a long moment, “...Child. Friendly. Explosives?”</p>
<p>“Yes, sir.”</p>
<p>“Send whichever one suggested that for a psych eval.”</p>
<p>“...All of them, sir?”</p>
<p>“...There was more than one? Yes, ALL of them. ...How many is 'all' exactly?”</p>
<p>“Twenty-seven.”</p>
<p>“...Out of fifty three of SCIDiv on this base? Schedule a motherfucking department review, too. And take away their coffee again. Be clear why it's being taken, no need for another war.”</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Agent Harrow was finishing up a mission somewhere in no-longer-Russian territory. Barton and Romanov were somewhere in still-Russian territory. STRIKE had been grounded for 24 hours, their next mission put on hold for a week, and they were restless with it. Morse and Hunter had just got back, and were wondering why they were recalled from their post-mission leave.</p>
<p>Fleeing the cafeteria filled with cranky and restless strike teams and specialists, Bobbi and Lance headed to the 19 th floor gym. The floor was silent, which somewhat confused the agents, with all the restless people down in the cafeteria, why was no one in this gym? Hesitantly opening the door, their answer stared up at them, adorable, mischievous, and very much caught in the act. They'd heard Romanov talk about her <em> detskiye monstry </em> often enough over the past months that there was no doubt just who the little boys in blue-and-green tartan kilts, converse, blue paint, and nothing else were. With a brief glance at each other, Bobbi and Lance smiled at the boys and chose to ignore that they'd caught the toddlers very clearly in the midst of building catapults out of toys from the child care aimed at the door.</p>
<p>“Hello, you must be Natasha's Little Monsters,” Bobbi said, “I'm Bobbi, and this is Hunter. If we promise to stay out of the way of your building of siege weaponry, do you mind if we do our exercises in here?”</p>
<p>Hunter grinned, almost evilly, “Or we can help you with your catapults?”</p>
<p>Colin and Caddell conferred briefly in Gaelic, Hunter valiantly doing his best not to let on that he understood every word. One of them paused and glared up at the agents, “You know NatMonster? What's her favorite cookie?”</p>
<p>Bobbi almost giggled, no wonder Nat adored these boys, they were as paranoid as she was and as troublesome as Clint, controlling her face to be as serious as the boys, “Clint's snicker-doodles, of course. But only the snicker-doodles made by Clint.”</p>
<p>Nodding solemnly, because that was the correct answer, the twins turned as one and pulled from a bag underneath a pile of toys for catapult parts, several bags of water balloons, and several rather large bottles of bright blue and green craft paints, offering the supplies up to the agents.</p>
<p>“You want the water balloons filled with paint?”</p>
<p>At their nod, Hunter's grin grew. He <em> liked </em> the way these kids thought. “Excellent. I'll get started on the green ones then.”</p>
<p>The boys nodded and returned to their catapults, securing large bottomed, shallow baskets to the end away from the door with jump ropes.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Ciara Harrow finished up her mission around the same time Strike Team Delta finished theirs, so the quinjet carrying Delta home simply stopped to pick her up, too, no need for a second 'jet to be sent out when one would do. Clint, who was quickly becoming a brother to Ciara, was bouncy, giddy, and trying to hide something. Ciara considered him for a moment before turning to Nat, who was lounging in her seat, seemingly unconcerned with anything except consuming her lollipop with relish.</p>
<p>“He has the boys' presents on the 'jet, doesn't he?”</p>
<p>“I don't know how he is a secret agent when he's horrible at lying and hiding things.”</p>
<p>Ciara sighed, “Coulson sent out a list of approved and banned presents. I hope you're abiding by it, Clint. I really don't want to have to take presents away from the boys.”</p>
<p>Clint pouted, it was less effective than he hoped, “It's not banned...” he whined.</p>
<p>Nat and Ciara shared a look and Ciara groaned. The party was definitely going to be chaos.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>In the gym, catapults were finished, tested, moved to maximize their chance of hitting, armed, and loaded. The trigger wires twined and connected to a smallish cylinder block, ready to be slid into the door handle when the twins knew their targets were approaching. Colin stood, claymore at the ready, off to the side of the door while Caddell kept watch on the hall through the barely-cracked door.</p>
<p>Bobbi and Hunter had contained their giggles and were sparring on the mats, though they were less effective than usual as half of their attentions were watching the boys' and their prank. Bobbi may have taken a picture of the catapults and the boys waiting for a “Cúl Tóna” and texted it to Nat.</p>
<p>Soon, the dulcet tones of Rumlow and Rollins arguing about something drifted down the hall, steadily approaching the door. Caddell pushed the door shut all the way and slid the trigger into place, picking up his sword and hurrying to his place beside the door opposite Colin. Bobbi and Hunter slowed their sparring so Bobbi could get her phone out and film the coming events.</p>
<p>Rumlow and Rollins were outright yelling by the time they reached the door, yanking the doors open so hard they slammed into the walls of the hall. The faces full of lurid blue and green paints silenced them momentarily. The twins took the opportunity to howl and rush the agents, swords swinging surprisingly effectively, Rumlow grunted in pain and Rollins fell over as the boys ran past and disappeared around a corner, laughing all the way.</p>
<p>Bobbi and Lance were laughing so hard they had doubled over as Bobbi sent the film to Nat, Clint, and Coulson.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Coulson couldn't decide if hilarity or exasperation was most warranted as he took his phone into Fury's office, both the corners of his mouth and his left eye twitching.</p>
<p>Fury looked at Coulson for a solid 30 seconds before groaning and burying his face in his hands.</p>
<p>“What have the devils done now?”</p>
<p>“It appears Rollins and Rumlow are in need of some more remedial training. Agent Morse just sent me this video.”</p>
<p>“...How did they get those toys <em> up </em> to the gym?”</p>
<p>“No idea.”</p>
<p>“Who taught them how to make catapults?”</p>
<p>“No idea.”</p>
<p>“Why didn't Morse and Hunter stop this?”</p>
<p>“...Lance Hunter <em> stop </em> a good prank? That's like asking Clint and Natasha to stop the boys doing something like this. At best, they were too busy laughing. At worst, they <em> helped.” </em></p>
<p>“...The party is in two days. Then another four days of clean up. Can you find me an excuse to transfer STRIKE to a different base by then? Somebody is going to kill someone if I keep STRIKE and the Harrows and Co. in the same building much longer.”</p>
<p>“I can try, but it's not likely. Best I might be able to do is find a semi long term mission to send them on.”</p>
<p>“Do it.”</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>The party went off without a hitch, though exactly as chaotic as expected with the Harrow Family &amp; Associates, the child care agents and the children, and SCIDiv taking over the cafeteria, and whatever Security agents and assorted others filtering through with presents and merriment as time permitted them.</p>
<p>The cooks made a gigantic “cake” for the boys that was half huge chocolate chip cookie and half brownie, decorated in blue and green, with two candles for each of them.</p>
<p>By nightfall, the cafeteria was in shambles and every person who had been on day shift or at the party that day was bone tired. Fully half of the children were sprawled in random, often ridiculous, places asleep wherever they had crashed.</p>
<p>Agent Harrow cataloged the boys' loot and internally debated how she was going to get it all home. Before she could say anything, Clint and Phil began gathering it all up into neat piles and Nat scooped up one of the sleepy boys. Phil smiled at the stunned look on Ciara's face.</p>
<p>“Come on, I'll drive you home. Do you need someone on watch?”</p>
<p>“Um, no, thank you. We should be alright,” Ciara stuttered as she gathered up her other boy and their day bag, following Phil out.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>If she woke up the next morning to Nat and Clint on her couch, the twins already dressed for the day and eating breakfast....</p>
<p>Well, she'd never tell anyone. The softies.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>
  <b>Second Birthday Loot:</b>
</p>
<p>From Bobbi Morse: A collection of DVDs including The Court Jester, Brave, Willow, Dragonheart, Robin Hood, Monsters Inc, Princess Bride, and ALL of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>From Lance Hunter: A pair of stuffed animal night lights because he has no idea how you shop for children so he just told the lady at the store he was shopping for twin two year old boys who liked blue and green and bought what she told him they would like, because he is kinda clueless about the boys.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>From Melinda May: ALL of the Dr. Seuss books.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>From Sharon Carter: Kindle tablets preloaded with several games and videos.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>From Phil Coulson: Agenty suits (though with sky blue shirt &amp; royal blue tie on one, and mint green shirt &amp; emerald green tie on the other) made of the same ballistics fabric his own suits are made of.</p>
<p>A pair of totally ordinary looking green and blue monster back-packs (like those teddy-bear ones, only monster shaped) with secret compartments in the ears/horns, all the paws, and one in the lining of the body.  The main back pack part isn't secret, but the others are all carefully hidden.  There is a small treat (like a candy-cane or a soft toy) in each compartment to reward them when they find how to open them.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>From Nick Fury: Blacklight-visible ink markers for making invisible notations that can write on any surface and only washes off with a special spray he gives their mom (for safety reasons) and sized down black-light flashlights to read them with.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>From the Security Team: Com sets already programmed with Security's channel, a private channel between the two, and a channel Harrow Club adults can tune their coms to when on base.</p>
<p>Combat pants and t-shirt replicas of the Security uniform shirts.</p>
<p>Combat belts with all the requisite holsters and pouches.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>From SCIDiv: Combat ready miniaturized copies of Clint's uniform, but with blue/green accents instead of purple.</p>
<p>Blue/Green Monster hoodies lined with ballistics fabric and ultra-soft microfiber fleece.</p>
<p>Paintball downsized replicas of Nat's preferred hand guns (without the contact paralytic...this year) and a Nat-on-a-mission sized 3 month supply of ammunition.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>From Natasha Romanov: Mostly dull small throwing knives (two full sets).</p>
<p>Mostly un-powered shock gloves.</p>
<p>(And candy. Lots of candy. Shhhhh.)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>From Clint Barton: Archery gloves in green and blue.</p>
<p>Child-sized compound bows, quivers, and arrows.</p>
<p>(And vent crawling lessons. Shhhhhhhhhhh.)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>***</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Fury nursed his single malt scotch old enough to drink itself and stayed close to his phone. He very much expected there to be trouble, thank you. He's not an idiot. He'd managed to get away with only sending Ciara on 24 to 48 hour missions that coincided with Strike Team Delta being home for months, but he was starting to get flak from the WSC on how he was “spending his resources.” He'd mostly managed to argue out of it on the grounds that “as useful as Agent Harrow is in the field, it is more apropos to have her on base as much as possible” but he had to give somewhere or they'd start asking... less than desirable questions. So Ciara was gone for three days as of – he checked his watch – one hour ago. Delta wouldn't be back for another three hours, and since The Catapult Incident (caps absolutely necessary), there had been a rash of prank-like traps all over the building but only ever catching Strike &amp; Field agents and the occasional asshole from another department that no one questioned deserved it in full.</p>
<p>And Hill, that one time. She was pissed as all fuck.</p>
<p>He suspected Clint and/or Natasha, probably helping the twins, but he couldn't prove it. If he could, all four would be in for a world of hurt and he wouldn't even have to do anything... just tell Maria.</p>
<p>There was the artificially raised floor throughout all of the 17th floor, grading slowly down to normal around the elevator, just to put a pit trap in the Level 6+ rec room. Specifically, a pit trap filled with water balloons filled with neon pink paint.</p>
<p>There was the hallway to the conference room the STRIKE team used for briefings, which had nerf guns in all of the vents, each trigger tied to fishing line, which was run diagonally down the wall to random heights before crossing the hall as a tripwire where the guns were aimed.</p>
<p>Then the cage that dropped out of the ceiling in the rec room the Level 5 Specialists liked to congregate in whenever someone approached the vending machine. It had 2 layers, a large one blocking access to the vending machine and a smaller one keeping the person who triggered it too far away to reach the vending machine.</p>
<p>The obstacle course that mysteriously appeared in the hall to the Level 6+ gun range where everything you had to do to get across it resulted in getting shot with a paintball gun. Hill had pink, blue, purple, and green paint on her somewhere for a week. (Nat crossed it 6 times that day with nary a mark on her. No one could figure out how she did it. She dodged.)</p>
<p>The gun cage that hit you with a sword whenever it was opened.</p>
<p>All of them coincided with one of Agent Harrow's missions. Needless to say, the next three days would be... interesting.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Director Fury had exactly fifteen more minutes with his scotch before the Code came over the PA. He sighed and picked up his phone.</p>
<p>“Eighty-five minutes exactly since Agent Harrow left. May be a new record of good behavior for them. When does Delta get back? I see, keep me advised.”</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>As the Code Chartreuse came over the PA system, several groans echoed throughout the cafeteria. Kitchen staff scrambled to secure all desserts but a few, as agents everywhere stood, getting ready to secure the area.</p>
<p>Agent Ward looked about him, confused, then hurried to follow Rumlow.</p>
<p>“What's going on?” he asked.</p>
<p>“Code Chartreuse, didn't you get the memo a few months ago?”</p>
<p>“I was on assignment out of the Sandbox till last week,” Ward denied.</p>
<p>“Oh, you're in for some...interesting times, then. Harrow's twin brats are spoiled rotten, escape the Child Care center and get away with murder. Nobody can be arsed to discipline the brats, so every time whatever idiot is in charge of child care this week loses track of them, the whole building has to go into lockdown until we find them.”</p>
<p>“Harrow has kids? Whose brilliant idea was it to let that lunatic have kids? It's a wonder they haven't exploded yet.”</p>
<p>“Work with her before did you?”</p>
<p>“Not by choice. Can't figure why they let pretty bits who'd whine about breaking a nail in the field.”</p>
<p>“A-fucking-men. Can't figure why she still has a job anyways. Near three years ago, goes out on an undercover mission, comes back pregnant.”</p>
<p>“Slept with her mark?”</p>
<p>“Way I figure, she's also sleeping with Coulson. Or Fury. Only way a slut like her could get close to a target, only way to keep her job after. Not like she has any other actual skills. Uppity, though. Us poor slobs ain't good 'nough for her.”</p>
<p>“Perhaps someone needs to teach her her place.”</p>
<p>“Perhaps. I like the way you think, Ward. This floor's clear, lock it down, and we'll move on to the next one.”</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>In the vent just above the two agents, two pairs of eyes glinted sharply. Somebody definitely needed to learn their place...and it wasn't any woman who did.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>If, an hour later, the sounds of explosions rang through the locker room, no one saw anything, and the security cameras caught nothing. Rumlow's insistence that “those brats bombed his locker” went ignored. How would a pair of two year olds even know how to make pressure bombs? Never mind know how to get into a locker and which one was HIS...And Ward's. Maybe they pissed someone off?</p>
<p>Rumlow was ...particularly taxing in training that day, his team was beat and cranky within three hours.</p>
<p>If at that time, Rumlow and Ward opened their new lockers to be shot with paintball guns... Well “those brats” definitely couldn't have done it, they'd been down in the ChatterBox jabbering away in Russian and Gaelic for three and a half hours – well before those lockers were assigned to the agents.</p>
<p>If old Mrs. Calhoun, the only translator in the Box fluent in the Highland dialects, smiled rather sharply and far more frequently than usual... Well, she was a cantankerous old biddy, and a bit of a language snob. The boys speaking HER languages so well probably just justified her snobbery to her, when everyone else insisted that there was little point in maintaining fluency in nearly-dead languages. She certainly didn't turn a particularly fox-like grin at Rumlow and Ward, whom she'd certainly not suddenly stopped addressing properly as Agents as she insisted on doing with everyone else. <em>Clearly,</em> you're imagining things.</p>
<p>The Chatterers had set up a small table for the polyglot boys, with paper from the printer and crayons from someone's bag (kid's meals are awesome, shut up.) If some of their doodles accidentally got scooped into reports... no one would notice. Not like it mattered much anyways. They're just doodles.</p>
<p>Agent Hernandez was charmed by the little boy in green flirting with her skillfully in perfect Argentinian Spanish.</p>
<p>Agent Cardona was enthralled with the careful and observant questions from the little boy in blue spoken in clear, precise Catalan.</p>
<p>Agent Viska was damned near gleeful about the Russian insults they both threw at the screens whenever the field agents there were being dumb.</p>
<p>Agent Verona just about fell out of his chair when they told him in Mandarin that his assigned agent was the son of a motherless goat.</p>
<p>Rumlow stormed off. If none of the ChatterBox agents could see the devils sitting with them, let them deal with the Chaos to follow on their own.</p>
<p>When he got back upstairs to his locker and passed out as he opened it, to wake up to a fantastic sharpie handlebar mustache, he couldn't even blame them to himself, he'd SEEN them down in the ChatterBox, how could they have stolen contact knockout drugs from SCI-Div and gotten up to his locker to coat the handle before him? They couldn't, no way about it.</p>
<p>Plotting angrily how to discover his pranker and get back at them, he went to report the incidents to Coulson. He didn't even think about Barton and Romanov leaving Coulson's office with the Terrors as he approached, nor notice the slight smile that steadily grew across Coulson's face as he ranted, sharpie mustache still firmly in place.</p>
<p>Coulson, bland as ever, waited patiently for a break in Rumlow's rant and calmly said, “We are aware of the problem, it's being investigated. Appropriate action will be taken as soon as possible. Is there anything else you need?”</p>
<p>Rumlow huffed and left.</p>
<p>The next time he saw Agent Ward, the younger agent had a sharpie monocle and a curled mustache and pointed beard, all of which was firmly refusing to be scrubbed off.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>“Agent Jackson, Agents Codano, Cervantes, and Watson returned from their missions today. Find them and get them here for follow up questions about their reports. And advise Agent Harrow that when she lands, I'll need to see her.”</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>“You asked to see me, Director?”</p>
<p>“Agent Cervantes. Have a seat.” Fury sighed, looking up from a stack of reports mysteriously containing crayon writing. He paused in thought long enough that the agent across his desk started squirming. “Agent, can you tell me why you started a heated debate of women's Olympic soccer in a bid to escape a Colombian drug runner's camp?”</p>
<p>“Um... Well, it was in the notes? Sir. The ones that have been getting added to the reports from Chatter? I don't know who you have in there, but they make good observations, even if it is in color coded crayon.”</p>
<p>“This portion of the notes, Cervantes?”</p>
<p>“Yes, sir. They're surprisingly useful.”</p>
<p>“The green is from Colin Harrow. The blue is written by Caddell Harrow. Apparently, the toddlers have been spending some of their escape time in the ChatterBox, and no one noticed that the 'doodles' that got mixed in with the reports were anything else. Were you aware of this?”</p>
<p>“No, sir, I was not, but it somehow doesn't surprise me. Request permission to never find out how they learned this nonsense?”</p>
<p>Fury sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Request granted. Tell me, though, why did you follow advice clearly written by children?”</p>
<p>Agent Cervantes fidgeted and pulled at his tie. “Well, Sir, I didn't have much to lose, and I figure Barton and Romanov tend to win by going with the crazy.”</p>
<p>“...Very well. Dismissed. Send the next one in.” Fury opened his third bottle of scotch and wrote a memo to himself to put in for this month's Not My Monkeys award.</p>
<p>“Sir?”</p>
<p>“Agent Watson. Come in.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>detskiye monstry : Russian, 'baby monsters'</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0015"><h2>15. Adventures With Carter</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The Irkutsk Incident. A red and chartreus hat is unpleasant to look upon for most people with eyes.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>The next few chapters will have so much dialogue in so many languages, many of which do NOT have an efficient translation method, that once things start happening, I won't be translating back and forth, rather I have simply written in English and adjusted the font.</p>
<p>This Chapter:<br/><b>bold</b> font is Russian<br/><i>italics</i> are Kalderash.</p>
<p>I really am trying to be as accurate as I can, but the Rroma are...notoriously difficult to get truthful information on. I understand why, history has not been kind to them, but it makes it quite difficult to portray them without bias, simply because unbiased facts are hard to come by. If I did something wrong in my writing and someone with ACTUAL life experience with Rrom traditions, histories, belief systems, etc, catches it, PLEASE CORRECT ME.</p>
<p>The Rroma are one of the most hideously treated victims of racism in all of history, only Jews really keep up with them historically speaking, and I'm not sure any other people are treated as poorly as Rroma often are in contemporary societies. Some of these things will be talked of and even occur on screen as a natural part of HAVING Rrom characters in Europe. Don't like it? Neither does anybody with both brain and heart functioning, and yet, it still actually happens, and I refuse to not mention it just because it's uncomfortable. It's real. Deal.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>“I swear to fucking god, Fury, pick up your motherfucking phone. I want a full month of paid leave, an excessively large Starbucks gift card and a REALLY nice present. Just Forty-Eight hours, my ass. If you don't get Delta to my coordinates NOW, you won't have a SHIELD to come back TO. There is a Chartreuse and Red Hat and it is EXACTLY as terrifying as it sounds. Get Me some Goddamned backup!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>38 hours earlier:</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Goddamned mutherfucking...” Fury grumbled, pinching his nose. “Jackson! Get Agent 13 in my office NOW.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jackson did NOT fall out of his chair this time....he'd put in for one with arms for that very reason. “Yes, sir.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Director?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Carter, thank God.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Sir?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The WSC has been on my ass about not using my assets 'appropriately'. Trying to buy time, I've sent everybody out on missions.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Everybody, sir?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Coulson and May, Morse and Hunter, Barton and Romanov.... Harrow...”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh. I haven't heard a Code Chartreuse yet, sir.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That's because they're in my study, which is also the panic room somebody insisted I had to have.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And you need me, becaaaause?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The WSC is now demanding I attend a meeting. In </span>
  <em>
    <span>person</span>
  </em>
  <span>. In London.” He watched the dawning realization - and horror – cross Sharon's face. “I have to leave in less than half an hour.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Sir, I'm fine with them for a few hours, but I've never had to handle them solo for longer than...”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Just 48 hours, Sharon, Delta should be back by then, I've told them to put a rush on it and be back by then. This is the key to Agent Harrow's house. You're officially on leave for the next week, but you'll get double hazard pay for the full week, not just the 48 hours you're on twin duty. Take them home. Keep them there. Try to keep them from killing themselves. If possible, keep them from killing anyone else too, but I'll understand if it happens...so long as it doesn't happen here. I'm off, have fun.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Sir-”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Enjoy your leave.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“SIR...”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Bye!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“...Shit.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sharon managed to get the boys and their things, order up a car with car seats installed, get them loaded up, home, fed them lunch, entertained them till dinner, fed them dinner, got them bathed and in bed and even to sleep with surprisingly few problems. Of course, her hair had paint and macaroni in it, chocolate milk on her shirt, ketchup stains on her good pants, she had bags under her eyes that looked large enough to hold her mother's entire “weekend in the Hamptons” luggage, there was not enough coffee or whiskey in the world, and she was more tired than she had been after six weeks in a battlefield, but no major incidents occurred. She figured she could count it as a success.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Of course... That was the moment her phone rang. The HERO one. She'd have ignored the personal one, maybe even the SHIELD one, frankly, she was thinking about ignoring this one, too. Maybe call into work dead. That sounded like a plan... The phone stopped ringing and she sighed in relief. Maybe she could sleep tonight after all. Nope. It was ringing again. Damn.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Groaning, she rolled off the couch and opened her phone. “This had better be fucking important. I'm on fucking leave.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She listened for a moment to the frantic voice of the agent on the other line babbling about not being able to reach anybody and rolled her eyes. Baby Agents. Even a more-secret-than-yours secret agency had them. “Get to the point. Now.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She really only needed the next sentence to be fully awake...and entirely hating the world.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Red Hat has run off without backup... again.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fuck.” She let the baby agent go back to his ramble about no one else being available so that she could bang her head repeatedly on the coffee table.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fine. I'm on it. I need a quinjet, her coordinates, as close to real time as possible, a gallon of coffee, cream and sugar....better make it espresso, the kind we don't let SCI-Div have, a mini fridge full of snacks and juice boxes, and every dessert you can convince Caf to part with. Then go get SCI-Div to give you whatever extra toys they have for the Harrow twins currently in stock. Put it All on the quinjet.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The Harrow Twins, ma'am?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Did I stutter? Harrow is on a mission and </span>
  <em>
    <span>as you noted,</span>
  </em>
  <span> no one else is available. Now do it. And don't forget the </span>
  <em>
    <span>fucking coffee</span>
  </em>
  <span> or you'll be in Antarctica for a </span>
  <em>
    <span>year.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes, ma'am, right away, ma'am.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Carter closed her phone, and considered throwing it in the microwave.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I JUST got them to sleep, too....”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They caught up to Peggy Carter at the Philadelphia International Airport, where a surly TSA agent was glaring suspiciously at the old woman pretending to be rather more senile than she actually was. Sharon took stock quickly: paint-hair? Macaroni? Ketchup stains? Twin toddlers? Well...at least it was a cover she could work with.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She whispered briefly to the boys, and then dropped their hands and hollered.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“AUNT PEGGY! There you are! I've been looking for you everywhere!” she and the boys ran up to the TSA agent, The boys setting up a hullabaloo worthy of seeing their favorite great aunt back from a trip, shouting for “Aunt Peg” as they galloped in for hugs from a woman they'd never met.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Pretending to be out of breath, Sharon caught the agent's arm and frisked him briefly. “Oh, my, thank you, sir, for helping my great aunt. Aunt Peggy, did your hip replacements set off the metal detectors again? I told you to make sure you brought your paperwork for that. Come on, the car's this way, all your favorites already in stock. Boys, let go of your aunt, how do you expect her to get to the car with you grabbing her legs like that? Toddlers, I swear. Well thank you again, sir. Do you have everything, Peg? How was London?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A corner of Peggy's mouth twitched up, her eyes bright with merriment at the show Sharon and the twins put on, “Fine, all fine, dear. My, how you boys have grown! Look at you! If you are good all the way back to the car, I'll give you each a candy, what do you say? Yes? Yes. Very good. Susan, be a dear, and grab my bag, would you? Which way did you say the car was?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“This way, Peggy. Now, Colin, you know better than to go climbing railings, get down. Let's go to the car!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The poor, dumbfounded TSA agent stared after them as if a freight train had just run him over in the middle of the ocean.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Peggy waited until they were around the corner and out of sight...barely.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Alright, Sharon, I'm not THAT senile yet, I know full well that you haven't made me a Great Grand Aunt yet, however disappointing that is, who are these young gentlemen? And what is Nicholas in a tizzy about now?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The answer to both questions is mostly the same. The Council are being…</span>
  <em>
    <span> picky</span>
  </em>
  <span> again. Nick has gotten into the habit of keeping one of four teams on hand at HQ at all times, rotating them out as needed, but at least one at home. The Council feel that he isn't using his assets appropriately. That's a quote. So he sent all four teams out on missions, planning to watch these two himself, as their mother is one of those four, only then the Council demanded he go to a meeting, in person, in London. Last time these two didn't have someone cleared to deal with them on hand to babysit them while Agent Harrow was on assignment...well there was explosions, paint, and knock-out drugs involved. As the last person cleared to watch them available, I got them. And not twelve hours later, some poor baby agent calls on the HERO line, panicking because you went off without backup or any kind of notice – </span>
  <em>
    <span>again</span>
  </em>
  <span> – and no one's answering because all the people cleared to follow </span>
  <em>
    <span>you</span>
  </em>
  <span> around and make sure you don't die from </span>
  <em>
    <span>surprise numbers,</span>
  </em>
  <span> or something, are also all the same people cleared to watch </span>
  <em>
    <span>them.</span>
  </em>
  <span> So. Babysitting on the go. Quinjet's here. New model. Cloaking device. I'm officially 'test driving' it over enemy territory. So, where are we off to today, Aunt Peg?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Russia, dear. All of them? Even that nice young man...Barton?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Unca Clin' an' NatMonster are in Somalia,” Colin piped up</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh. Phil?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Unca Phil an' Aun' May had 't go to Paraguay,” replied Caddell.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Bobbi?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Tokyo,” answered Sharon.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Silly Lance wen' wif her,” Colin verified.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That lovely red-headed girl with the bombs? Reminded me a lot of Dernier...”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“...They won' tell us where Mamma gits sent. Don' wan' us tryin' to go help,” Caddell said sullenly.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That makes rather a lot of sense actually. What are your names then?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“'M Caddell. Noisy one's Colin.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Not noisy. YOU do distrac'ons, I hit people when they ain' lookin. </span>
  <em>
    <span>You</span>
  </em>
  <span> noisy,” Colin argued, mouth full of cookie as he pointed vehemently at his brother with the other half.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Buckle in boys. Just like in the car. Where in Russia, Aunt Peggy?” Sharon interrupted, before they could devolve into demonstrations of their skills.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Irkutsk, dear. Where's that coffee?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“To your left. Irkutsk. Siberia. In </span>
  <em>
    <span>February</span>
  </em>
  <span>.” Sharon sighed, “Could be worse, I suppose. Could be Batagay. Before you even say it, Peg, NO. Wait for a day when I don't have the boys. Their coats are NOT rated for above the arctic circle. Certainly not in February when, if we're </span>
  <em>
    <span>optimistic</span>
  </em>
  <span>, the daily high temperature MIGHT hit negative forty Celsius. NO.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fine. Spoilsport.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Boys, how many regional dialects of Russian do you know?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Regional Russian? Sharon, what -”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“They spend almost as much time correcting the ChatterBox's translations of idioms and dialect differences as they do pranking STRIKE and charming toys out of SCI-Div. I'm not sure anyone bothers keeping track of how many languages they know, never mind dialects.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Peggy blinked in surprise, then looked at the boys, who appeared to be doing calculations.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Dunno, 'Ronnie, where's Irtusk onna map?” Colin asked, “That'd make tellin you if we know the one you need us to easier.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sharon seemed a bit startled, too, as she scrambled to pull up a map on her phone. “Here. By this lake.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Huh.” Caddell pondered, rubbing his nose, “Ye wan' Russian, Halh, Tuva, Tatar, Evenki, Khori, or Kalderash?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Caddeeeelll,” Colin hissed, “We're no' s'posed to know anyfin' wif less'n ten thous'n speakers!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“....Oh. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Yeah.</span>
  </em>
  <span> ….Russian, Tuva, Tatar, Khori, or Kalderash?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Peggy, pale and shaking, pulled a flask from her purse and took a rather large gulp, before passing it to Sharon, who did the same and capped it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Sharon, how secure are we?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ramp is closed, I turned the zapper on as soon as we left HQ and haven't turned it off since.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Good. Boys, I'm very serious now, how do you know so many languages and who knows about it?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Wide-eyed and scared, tearing up a bit, Colin answered “Mamma said izza secret. The bad people would hunt everybody down and 'sper'men' on them iffin they knew.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Caddell shook his head.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Were you born with it?” Peggy insisted.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Caddell gulped and nodded, Colin started crying quietly in truth, and Sharon pulled him into her lap, “You're not in trouble with us,” she soothed, “we want to make sure you aren't in trouble with anybody else either, and that you don't get in trouble by accident. Now, what languages have you used in the ChatterBox?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Colin gulped and, between sniffs, listed, “English, Spanish – Castillian, Mexican, and Argentinian, Catalan, Mandarin, Moscow Russian, Celtic and Gaelic.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Okay, that's good. Everyone knows your mamma speaks those languages fluently. When we head home, until your mamma tells you otherwise, that's ALL you know, understand?” Sharon waited for their nods and continued, “And I think you should cut down your visits to the ChatterBox. Once or twice a week only, and not all day either. For this trip, you may use Russian, Tuva, or Kalderash, whichever seems best at the time. All clear? Good.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Peggy, softer, but still serious, made eye contact with both boys, “I'm sorry I scared you, but I needed to be sure you were safe. Can you forgive me for scaring you?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Caddell gave Peggy a tight hug as Colin sniffled and nodded, and, more verbal than Caddell at the moment, assured, “Мы прощаем вас. К сожалению, мы не были более осторожными. Мы сделаем лучше, обещаю.” (We forgive you. We're sorry we weren't more cautious. We'll do better, promise.)</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The quinjet landed in the outskirts of Irkutsk, Russia in no time at all, which Sharon was less than enthused about, as it meant her nap was rather shorter than she'd like. She finished off the gallon of coffee as the other three woke and readied themselves for the cold outside.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>If she'd been less tired, she might have thought to review what “toys” SCI-Div had sent along and frisk the boys for contraband... as it was, they managed to secret quite a bit on their persons as Peggy watched with a smile and Sharon tried, and mostly failed, to clean paint from her hair and changed into locally appropriate garb.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tatiana Doverskya was worrying about the neighbor again. Grigor could tell: she always pulled at her lips when worried, and she kept looking out the window at the other house.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <b>“Tatiana,”</b>
  <span> he began, </span>
  <b>“You're worrying again.”</b>
</p>
<p>
  <b>“She does not go out. Her family does not visit. Do you think they are unkind?”</b>
</p>
<p>
  <b>“Tanechka. Stop. If her family is unkind, Ekaterina will tell us in her own time. Have you considered that maybe she does not have a family?”</b>
</p>
<p>
  <b>“If she was an orphan, wouldn't she have told us?”</b>
</p>
<p>
  <b>“Tanechka, regimes rise and fall every day, we know this. When they do, they leave orphans behind. Some blame orphans for parents on the 'wrong side'. Why would she tell us? She has only been our neighbor a few years.”</b>
</p>
<p>
  <b>“....I'm going to go bake some cookies.”</b>
</p>
<p>
  <b>“That is a wise idea, my Tanushka.”</b>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Grigor went calmly back to his tea and paper, it would likely be a late night tonight as is, without worrying about what his wife was getting up to this time. As ever, she would mother everyone she met to death and stuff them full of cookies. She seemed to think that if there were still cookies, then all would be right with the world.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>...They WERE good cookies.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Warren pondered the past year with the family that had all but adopted him and the job that set him into their path as he drove the rickety old RV into the outskirts of Irkutsk. Half of his job had been completed quickly and was almost laughable. Someone had pointed to the kumpania that traveled from Beijing to Vienna and back every year and claimed they were smuggling. They </span>
  <em>
    <span>were</span>
  </em>
  <span>, of course, but the smuggling of contraband books and films supporting free thinkers into anti-thought countries and of refugees </span>
  <em>
    <span>out,</span>
  </em>
  <span> was hardly a matter for SHIELD to be involved in. The second half, though... The Roma were hard to trace, half of them either had no records at all, had records only in countries they mostly weren't in, or went through records like a family of ten goes through toilet paper. Once you throw the constant traveling in, no one knew who was where and when. They were easy targets for human traffickers, and when they weren't in town, missing tourists and other soft targets went up in number. He chewed his lip as he considered breaking SHIELD rules. The voivode would probably help him enthusiastically, but he'd have to break cover. The crotchety old man probably already knew Warren was an agenty type person at least, if not SHIELD in specific; he appeared to know just about </span>
  <em>
    <span>everything.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Warren shook himself out of his thoughts as the caravan approached the campsite behind where they would set up their booths and wares – parking the beast was problematic enough without wool-gathering in the process.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Nineteen hours after Fury had handed her a set of keys and strolled merrily from his office, Sharon found herself walking through Irkutsk's markets in the pre-dinner rush, trying desperately to keep track of potential threats, two wild, energetic little boys, and her great aunt who had far more energy than any woman in her mid nineties should have (a continuously active lifestyle, titanium joint replacements and surgical ceramic in the spine would do that, turns out), while her brain shouted at her that it was 3 AM, not 4 PM, and it had been a very long day. She had just begun wondering how long it would take Romanoff and Barton to get there from Somalia if she called on their emergency lines, when a ruckus picked up at the booth the boys had gone to check out. She called out for Peggy to come back this way while she got the boys and dove into the crowd around the booth, making use of her smaller size and an occasional elbow to soft places on the bystanders to get through quickly.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>At the center of the booth, her two smallest charges were, if anyone were smart enough to see it, terrifyingly angry, and pointing....Oh, Lord, SCI-Div gave them crossbows, with... well, she didn't know what kind of darts those were, and she wasn't keen to find out. If they were explosive or tranqs, Ciara'd have her hide before wiping the floor with SCI-Div, plausible deniability was her friend, yes, it was.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <b>“Boys. Do I want to know what's going on here? And you know the crossbows are supposed to stay home, how did you get them here without me noticing?”</b>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Auntie, The bad man cheats. He miscalculated on purpose, moved the decimal over so this man have to pay ten times what BadMan charges everyone else, just because this man is Rrom. Is food. Is needed.” </span>
  </em>
  <span>Colin insisted firmly.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Rrom has family to feed. Is bad to double price on foods. Is worse to do for just one people. Is worser to ten-times it. Worst when it starves babies. BadMan is Worst Man. We shoot?”</span>
  </em>
  <span> Caddell added in his quiet voice.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sharon would have buried her face in her hands if that didn't mean taking her eyes off of Terrors 2 and 3, and mentally re-prioritized her to do list, moving 'Call for backup' up to the top.</span>
</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>
  <span>It took some doing – rather more than it should have, actually, due to the Kalderash-speaking, crossbow-wielding toddlers – and quite a bit of internal cussing at racist pricks, but Sharon managed to disperse the crowd, get the boys out of trouble, the shopkeep terrified into charging fair prices for everyone including the Roma, no cops called, nor a child-services case levied against them, and even a minimum of blood on her hands. Punching the shopkeep in the mouth was not the most prudent of ideas, but thoroughly satisfying, especially once he threatened to have the boys taken away because “Gypsy Scum shouldn't be allowed to reproduce.” There were reasons HYDRA had never tried to recruit her, and her last name was actually pretty low on that list. If the Roma man clearly had plans to arrange some mischief for the prick, well, the Carter women were unlikely to hinder them. Deserved Chaos is a time-honored tradition for Legacies.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Of course, this meant that she'd had her eyes off of her lunatic aunt for rather more time than she had intended, and the elderly, </span>
  <em>
    <span>theoretically retired</span>
  </em>
  <span> agent was nowhere in sight. Sharon couldn't decide if the sounds of a scuffle around the corner was relieving, because Peggy was </span>
  <em>
    <span>certainly</span>
  </em>
  <span> in or near there, or terrifying, because Peggy was certainly</span>
  <em>
    <span> in or near there,</span>
  </em>
  <span> or terrifying, because maybe it was non-Peggy related trouble and she was elsewhere </span>
  <em>
    <span>causing trouble</span>
  </em>
  <span>, or relieving, because maybe it was just non-Peggy related trouble. And she couldn't quite figure out how to hold on to both boys to keep them out of trouble, have a gun out to keep herself out of trouble, AND dig Peggy out of whatever trouble she had found to occupy herself with while Sharon dealt with the boys. Never mind managing a phone to call for backup.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hoisting Caddell up on her hip and holding Colin's hand with the same arm, Sharon cautiously peeked around the corner, hand on her gun.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Oh good. It WAS Peggy-related.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Oh, lord. It was Peggy-related.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sighing, Sharon rounded the corner, slammed the nearest person into the wall, looked at Caddell and sternly informed him, “Just because your Great Aunt does something, does NOT mean you should do it. In fact, if she does it, you don't do it. Ever. Except win. Always win.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Caddell giggled as Peggy knocked another of the goons out, with her shoe, no less, and the rest simply stopped and stared at the women, baffled entirely.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <b>“What happened this time, Aunty?”</b>
</p>
<p>
  <b>“...I was looking at my map. They were rude.”</b>
</p>
<p>
  <b>“...And?”</b>
</p>
<p>
  <b>“These two insulted me. That one assaulted the girl over there, she slapped him, and they all got quite cranky about it. I settled it. Now, where's my map? I do hope the wind didn't make off with it...”</b>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>[Somewhere, Gabe Jones just looked up from a book and smiled, sighing, "if I only had my legs," before going back to his story.]</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Colin was bored. The WorstMan had been dealt with, 'Ronnie had found Auntie Peg, the RudeBoys had been taught manners, and the aunties were talking. He tried to be good and stay with the others, really, he did, but there were shinies, Russian men talking in hushed voices about having traced... something to Irkutsk, though they weren't really clear on where in Irkutsk, and then he saw the Romano man from earlier walk by with purchases drop something and not notice it, so he followed to return the little box thingie. It was a long walk, but he wasn't bored anymore...</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Durriken Calder was a gnarled old man with surprisingly many of his own teeth still in his mouth and a glimmer of intelligent mischief in his eyes. At 84 years old, one would not expect the voivode to be hauling wood for the campfire, which, of course, is exactly what he was doing when Warren gathered the gumption to speak with him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Rai Calder,”</span>
  </em>
  <span> he began.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Sir? Since when does the boy I see call me sir?”</span>
  </em>
  <span> Durriken groused, pausing to peer at Warren, he nodded, </span>
  <em>
    <span>“Ah, ready to tell me are you? Well, sit.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Purodad, I am not certain what it is you are expecting me to tell you, but yes, I have much I must say, mostly unpleasant, though I must ask you to hear it out.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Hear it out? What else would I do, chikni? I suspect much, old I am, blind I am not. Speak, I listen.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“I have told you many truths, Purodad, but also many lies. My name is Warren Peace, I was sent among your vitsa by SHEILD, to help you. I was to keep it secret, but I do not think I can do what I must without your help.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Hmph. I suspected some such. Better SHEILD than KGB or some other pigheaded gajo police, I suppose. Help us with what, though?”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“There is a slave-ring near here. When you are not here, gajo tourists and new arrivals go missing. They show up months later in other countries, mostly as bodies. When you are here, they do not. SHEILD believes your young, girls mostly, have been going missing along our trails through Irkutsk and Mongolia, though they cannot prove it as you have few if any records. I am to follow the trail, should any go missing, dismantle the ring, and return the slaves home.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Durriken was silent for some time, his usually mirthful face somber and pensive as he lit the fire. When it crackled merrily and his pipe was lit, only then did he look back up at Warren, who had waited patiently, knowing 'Grandfather' would speak only when ready.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“We lose less now than when it began. We became unwary. We became prey. I allowed it, thinking dangerous times past, let the children have their fun; fun has oft been rare for our People, the young should have it while they may, I thought. We have learned. Wolves hunt the weakest of the herd. We keep them close, keep them safe, now. I will give you what help I can. More...traditional leaders would not take the girls back, assuming impurity but they are OURS and were only lost through our failures. My failures. I will convene a council tonight. Should you find any alive, Romni or Gajo, we will take them. Prepare wagons for them to live among us, but separate so that they have no need to fear or feel pressured by close company with men. We will do all we can to heal them, and take care of them when they cannot.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Thank you, Phuro.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Hmph. Now, Elders' business out of the way, are you going to tell me what has been bothering you? You've been moping since Doomstadt. Your </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>job</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> has nothing to do with it.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Warren started, then nearly facepalmed. Of course he noticed that. Grandfather that he is, he was still as nosy as an old gajo woman. Warren sighed, </span>
  <em>
    <span>“Nothing of great import, Purodad. I simply saw a statue of my father in Doomstadt. It startled me, he was not a good man, and I don't have fond memories.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Statue? There are few statues in Doomstadt that are not of Viktor von Doom. My brother's-son is rather too egotistical for his own good. The only one I can remember seeing this year is of my brother Patrin's son, Viktor's cousin. Never did understand why he named the boy Baron.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“...Your brothers'-sons? Father was Doom's cousin?”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Yes, sadly. Patrin and Ferka were younger than I, they did not remember the good days after the Bolsheviks and before Stalin, they barely remembered the hard days of the War. They grew bitter and spurned tradition, as well as kindness. Their sons bear the marks. So...Baron's boy, are you? Hmph. Good to see some good coming back into the line. We'll have to get you married to a good girl.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“PURODAD!”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Durriken's chuckle rumbled all throughout dinner.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Debating with Peggy and “Vika” what to do with the unconscious goons and their much more meek conscious friends, Sharon shifted Caddell higher on her hip and rubbed her eyes...and Stopped. She'd used two hands, and hadn't had to let go of a small hand to do so.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Colin?"</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Colin wasn't anywhere in sight. Motherfucking fucking fuck. She'd lost Colin. Ciara was going to murder her. Backup. Now. Yes.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A large middle-aged Russian man rounded the far corner as Sharon reached for her phone. Deciding to let her aunt deal with him, backup and Colin much more important than any impending hazard a well-armed, well muscled six-foot-plus man might pose, Sharon tightened her grip on Caddell and turned away to call Fury's cell, and then Clint's emergency line, panic quietly murmuring in the back of her brain.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She was in the middle of leaving a third, “language” laden voicemail in Russian, having reached neither Fury, Clint, NOR Natasha, when a large hand came down on her shoulder. Few people chuckle when you almost break their hand, this was one of them, apparently.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <b>“I am Grigor,”</b>
  <span> he rumbled merrily down at her, </span>
  <b>“My niece, Vika, and your aunt have told me of your day, and your problem. I owe you, for helping my niece. Come, my wife will welcome you while I have my people look for your lost one. She made cookies today. She does that when she worries. Today she worries for our neighbor, tomorrow she worries for Vika, the day after she worries for our son. Always worrying after someone or other, my wife; plenty of cookies to be had, and always fresh. Come.”</b>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sharon resolutely DID NOT cry thinking about how the cookie-devouring twin was missing, and this one much preferred brownies.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She might have sniffled a bit.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Colin kept up with the Romano man rather well, for a two-and a-half year old, no matter how overburdened the adult man was, most children get weary of walking a-pace within fifteen minutes. Some half hour of following the man had passed when Colin lost sight of him, his shorter legs unable to keep from falling farther and farther behind. Rounding the last corner he'd seen the man take, he found that it didn't matter that he couldn't see the man he sought: he'd arrived at the Roma encampment, certainly someone could direct him right.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Of course, things did </span>
  <em>
    <span>not</span>
  </em>
  <span> go to plan. The sun had set while he walked and it was quite cold. The first fire he approached had only two men, one young, one old, finishing dinner at the fireside. Colin's nose was running from the cold, much to his annoyance, and his teeth jittered, marring his illusions of BigBoy-ness and being the tougher, rougher brother. He tripped over a fallen branch in the darkness – a rookie mistake, in his mind, furthering his frustration with himself – and the two men startled and looked up.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Colin bit his lip and straightened his spine, determined to be his Mam's BigLittleMan. He was Not Going To Cry. Dammit, (sorry, Mama) he was a Big Boy.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It lasted all of about 45 seconds.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And then the familiar-looking young man was bending down to him, asking him what he was doing here, in Gaelic, calling him GreenMonster and asking where Blue was. And everything spilled out, tears and words and frustrations with being cold and the branch and Unca Clin' woulda never had shivvers or tripped or misplaced the Aunties and he'd lost the man who'd dropped the thingie he was trying to return and had probably missed dinner and Caddell was eating cookies. WITHOUT him. Inna warm house with blue curtains and the aunties. And he'd made the aunties worried and he really, REALLY didn't mean to.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Next thing he knew, he was bundled up next to the fire on the GoodAgent's lap, surrounded by half the camp's Ma's and Gramma's as the man (Kaven, his name was Kaven) explained the events at the booth while warm, yummy food appeared from nowhere just for Colin.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Maybe he didn't have to be big just yet. War's lap was comfy.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ekaterina always knew when her neighbor was worrying. She baked. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Who</span>
  </em>
  <span> she was worrying about always showed up in just WHAT she baked, as it was always that person's favorite, so when she smelled Tatiana's red velvet cream cheese and dark chocolate cookies wafting across the side yards, she closed down her computer and went to reassure the motherly woman next door that she was fine. It might've been trying, except that Tatiana's baking could probably be used to get even Papa to talk willingly about...anything, really, it was just that good. If she was baking for you, you just did not “take a pass.” You'd have to be crazy. Well, crazier than even her family was.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They spent the next hour or so talking over coffee and decadent desserts. Tatya was reassured, and back to merrily begging Katenka to marry one of her boys. Any of them, really, even the married one, Tatya wasn't picky, and apparently liked Katenka better than her current daughter-in-law anyway. ...That wasn't saying much, actually, most people liked a scorpion in their bed better than Oksana. Katenka was just getting ready to wiggle her way out of dinner with her neighbors so she could get back to arranging herself an extraction before the KGB figured out where in Irkutsk, exactly, she was. She may have done some </span>
  <em>
    <span>technically</span>
  </em>
  <span> illegal things, but not even Mama would have a problem with their somewhat ambiguous morality... It's not like the warlord was actually going to spend that aid-money on the people he was nominally responsible for, and his password was actually “PaSsWoRd” he was ASKING for the money to be stolen. And she gave 85% of it to the actual people's needs, anyways. Totally OK. By family standards, at least, and she, frankly, had stopped caring what Materi Russia thought somewhere around the time they decided hackers weren't what they particularly wanted from their assassin programs after all, and ordered her execution.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And just as she had rounded the third “are you </span>
  <em>
    <span>sure</span>
  </em>
  <span> you don't?” corner and was headed for homebase of the front door.... Grigor and Vika walked in, with </span>
  <em>
    <span>guests.</span>
  </em>
  <span> The little blonde woman looked … well, like she hadn't slept in 24 hours and had spent most of it with particularly rambunctious toddlers, one of which was on her hip. Katenka generally did not do well with children. She was </span>
  <em>
    <span>not</span>
  </em>
  <span> childproof and kid friendly. She cussed like her mama and had as many sharp and pointy things as her papa, and had even less idea what to do with small things than the rest of her sisters did.... She edged slowly away from the quiet and curious child. The door closing drew her attention to the last guest.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <b>“....Tante Margarethe? You're earlier than expected. How was the flight from Bergamo?”</b>
</p>
<p>
  <b>“Drafty, and the Swiss Alps were as unpleasant as your Papa always swore they were.”</b>
</p>
<p>
  <b>“Why are you here rather than at my place, or where I said I'd pick you up?”</b>
</p>
<p>
  <b>“Your cousin had to unexpectedly watch her sister's twin boys, and while we dealt with some ill-mannered idiots hassling Vika, one of them wandered off. Grigor has kindly offered to help find him.”</b>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tatiana, who had been fussing over Sharon and Caddell, who tried very hard to pronounce her name only to come out with Tatni, suddenly became very.... </span>
  <em>
    <span>Tatiana</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
  <b>“Well. THAT just won't do. Grigor, you get on with finding the boy, I am baking. And getting Sarron some hot chocolate. I want him home before I am done baking. Now, my dear, I must know, what is your favorite dessert?”</b>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Caddell made a moue, like he wanted to say only his... but, </span>
  <b>“Brownies with chocolate chips and nuts in, but my brother likes chocolate chip cookies best. Sometimes Mama makes a pan of brownies, that's all cookie dough on one side and brownies on the other. We like that most. Because both at once and no one has to wait longer.”</b>
</p>
<p>
  <b>“Would you like to help me bake cookies for your brother?”</b>
</p>
<p>
  <b>“...Yes, please, Tatni.”</b>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Caddell settled in to eat some of the red cookies while they waited for the brownies and chocolate chip cookies to bake. The red cookies were strange, but delicious. Brownies were still his favorite, he was determinedly loyal to his loves, and he did love brownies, but the red cookies were a close second.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The Aunties were worried. He wasn't sure why, Colin was fine. The Roma were nice and keeping him warm and fed, and there were even desserts, stranger than the red cookies desserts, but also yummy. He figured it was an adult thing and focused on hoarding some of the red cookies to share with Colin, as he knew Colin was hoarding some of his desserts to share with Caddell. Dessert is a very important thing, one should always have desserts on hand to share. And to not share. Caddell was pretty sure it was a rule.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He had just finished stuffing every pocket not already full of Important Tools and weapons with the cookies when Granmauntie Peg caught him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <b>“Little monster, what are you doing?”</b>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Caddell doesn't lie often, and when he does, he isn't very good at it. Colin is the story-teller.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <b>“I'm taking Colin some cookies. They are strange, but yummy. He needs to try them. I want to try the strange cakey thing he is eating. He's saving me some.”</b>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Granmauntie looked like Buttface had when Colin had hit him with the stick. Auntie 'Ronnie startled and stared hard at Caddell, </span>
  <b>“Little Blue, do you </b>
  <b>
    <em>know</em>
  </b>
  <b> where Green is?”</b>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Silly question, Auntie, of COURSE he knows where Colin is! Why wouldn't he?  Confused, Caddell asked, </span>
  <b>“Why wouldn't I? He's with the Roma. They're nice, and he got the box thingie back to the man who dropped it.”</b>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Even Katka and Tatni's heads went sideways. Grigor stopped talking on the phone and turned to face him. After a moment and a shared glance with Tatni, he turned to the aunties, </span>
  <b>“Are they twins?”</b>
</p>
<p>
  <b>“Identical twins,”</b>
  <span> Ronnie answered, </span>
  <b>“Why?”</b>
</p>
<p>
  <b>“Twins </b>
  <b>
    <em>know things</em>
  </b>
  <b>, sometimes. Grigor, get the truck. Vika, get the coats. Katenka, spare blankets. I'll pack food and desserts to share, Blue Twin put the cookies back, we'll be taking some with us, but in a proper container. Margarethe, could you pack the coffee, please?”</b>
  <span> Tatni was like a general, Caddell thought, and you'd have to be Rumlow kinds of Stupid to disobey </span>
  <em>
    <span>this</span>
  </em>
  <span> General's orders. </span>
  <b>“No, Sarron, you sit tight till we're ready to go, you look like a faint breeze would knock you over. When did you sleep last, dear?”</b>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Everyone moved to follow directions, Auntie Ronnie's head thunked onto the tabletop. Concerned, Caddell knew just what to do. He slid one of the red cookies across the table until it bumped lightly on her nose. She blinked, sat up and nibbled at it. Satisfied, Caddell nodded and went about his instructions.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dessert fixes </span>
  <em>
    <span>everything</span>
  </em>
  <span>. It's a rule.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was quite possibly the strangest thing anyone in Irkutsk had ever seen. The Bratva and the Roma having one HUGE, winter-night, bonfire party. Two little ginger haired boys presided over the dessert table from the shoulders of their chosen mounts, Mishka and Warren, as all but three others celebrated life and health and happiness and good sense and little boys, calls of “BAKSHEESH!” ringing into the cold night.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Peggy, Grigor, and Durriken sat to one side, in, but not of, the celebrations, drinking the wine and vodka and coffee like the others, if slower and with a more somber mien, talking quietly.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Before long, the twins were dead to the party around them, curled in a bundle of bear, wolf, and fox furs, holding on to each other, near the centermost and largest fire pit. Sharon was coaxed into her own bundle near them with promises that many others would keep watch over the boys for her, and the conference of the three leaders broke to go find their various lieutenants. Peggy spoke quietly with Katenka and Warren about plans for the morrow, Grigor with his sons, right hand, and Tatiana, Durriken with the Phuri and Phuri dae.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When everyone settled for the night, the Roma RVs had been pulled into a tight series of circles around the center, Bratva and Roma alike stood guard.</span>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>Morning came cold and clear, and with it arrived Tatiana with her knitting circle and book club and half a dozen previously non-existing RVs, all painted a deep blue with fire red accents and freshly renovated. Grigori arrived with the rest of the Bratva, including men called in from all the nearest cities. Warren, Kaven of the Roma, and Mishka of the Bratva claimed Twin-Duty, while Sharon and Katenka backed Peggy. There were problems on the horizon that affected them all. Today, they'd knock them down. Katenka's Lieu-taught hacking got them the location of the slave traders, just across the border into Mongolia, Peggy's team was to evac the slaves, the Bratva were on trader-elimination, and the Roma kept the exit clear. Simple enough. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And, in truth, it was...</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The camp was quiet, most of the people having left for their jobs, regular or the day's battle. The remaining adults seemed to think this was a good thing. Colin and Caddell, however, were very, very bored.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>As any senior agent, particularly Coulson, Hill, and Sitwell, can tell you, any of the Harrows or their adopted family getting bored is a Very Bad Thing™. Naturally, the twins decided on an adventure while they could.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Later, many would wonder how, exactly, they did it. Neither the Borzoi wolf hound Caddell rode nor Colin's Caucasian Ovcharka mount had been known to be friendly towards either strangers or children, much less willingly carry strange, Hobbit-sized younglings on their backs wherever the boys directed, but it seemed the dogs had adopted the boys as THEIRS as much as the adult humans had.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The trio of Twin Keepers swore and bolted after the boys, trying in vain to keep up with the near 20 mph “easy lope” the great dogs set even as the other Roma shrugged and returned to their daily activities. The dogs had taken on wolves and bear and won, it was rather unlikely there could be any danger they could not protect the boys from, and the keepers would think to get into a car to follow them soon enough.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sharon was miserable. It was below freezing, she was wet, she was cold, and she stank so bad that she had to ride all the way back to Irkutsk in the bed of the truck. She wasn't sure she WANTED to know why Aunt Peg had 30 grams of Rubidium in a sugar-crystal encasement in the heel of her shoe, nor how she got it; rubidium was rare, expensive, and regulated. She HAD wanted to know why her aunt had decided to flush the damned thing into the pipes and septic tank in the restroom of the slave-traders' showroom. All Peggy would say was “The Lieu gave me the idea. Frag grenade made from potassium and a canteen of water and nails during the war.” And, really, that explained much more than it should.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The net result was that the entire water system blew, half from the pressure created by the reaction, and Sharon got covered in sewage, because the more acidic than most places' water dissolved the sugar faster and reacted more with the alkali than expected and she was still fighting three thugs too near the bathrooms. At least she hit the ground fast enough. The thugs didn't. She didn't think there was a worse way to die than “knocked out by flying toilet seat, drowned in sewage.” Though, “Froze to death, covered in sewage” might be close.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She spent the ride back cussing out Fury's voicemail. It was something to do, and might even keep her warm enough to avoid that ignominious death. Asshole never even answered. 37 hours and she'd had more trouble than any four missions put together. Fucker OWED her, whether he liked it or not. To say that she was decidedly Not Happy with the day at 10 am would be understating things a bit. At 10:15, it was much, MUCH worse.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They drove into Irkutsk to find the city in absolute chaos. Katenka's house had been blown up, the market place was in full riot mode, three city blocks were splattered with hideous chartreuse aeronautics paint from street to rooftops, and a wolf hound ran up to the truck dragging a loudly complaining KGB agent by the ankle with all the pride of a cat carrying a half-dead rat to its owner. She wasn't getting her hot shower any time soon, and she had the sinking feeling that the boys were involved, somehow.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>February 14</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>th</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>, 2011, 12:00 EST</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Nick Fury stepped off his quinjet in a uniquely good mood. Aside from the meeting with the WSC, which was as unpleasant as always, the two days in London had been fantastic. London SHIELD offices operated with optimal efficiency, due mostly to Agent Hetty Lange, possibly the best acquisition SHIELD had ever managed, stealing her out from under Vance had just been icing on the devils-food cake. (If only he could figure out how Gibbs had snagged Zhiva David...) Wisdom had even had a new, even better, black leather trench coat made for him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He was, however, somewhat confused when another 'jet landed in front of him, as none had been scheduled for this platform for another half-hour. He was more confused when the ramp opened, and from it, descended two huge dogs, one chicken, the Harrow Boys, both filthy and exuberant, and a remarkably bedraggled Agent 13 carrying....was that a goat? Carter the younger deposited the kid goat in his arms (where it promptly began eating his shirt) with a baleful glare he didn't understand and turned to walk away.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Agent Carter, Explain.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You should have answered your phone. Or checked your messages. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Any</span>
  </em>
  <span> of the </span>
  <b>three dozen</b>
  <span> I left. Now you have a baby goat, a chicken, two dogs, and two toddlers. And. I. Am. Getting. A </span>
  <em>
    <span>Shower.</span>
  </em>
  <span> And an extensive paid leave with no calls on EITHER phone. And I </span>
  <em>
    <span>strongly</span>
  </em>
  <span> recommend you find a damned good present for me by the time I get back. Report is already in your email. Do </span>
  <em>
    <span>not</span>
  </em>
  <span> call me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>(16.6 hours earlier, 08:20 2/14/2011 IKRT/ 19:30 2/13/2011 DC)</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Twenty minutes into their 'venture, the twins turned their mounts towards Tatni's house. All adventures require adequate cookie supplies. 's a rule. And Tatni's house had cookies, Tatni was a firm believer in the Rules too, and always had cookies and other desserts on hand.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They did not get their cookies.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>As they turned the corner onto Tatni's street, they discovered Katka's house had been blown up by DummyAgents. They weren't SHIELD, and weren't local police, and they'd managed to trip Katka's security, which meant they had to be pretty dumb. Worst, they were blocking the road to Tatni's, just standing around looking confused that Katka'd had perfectly reasonable security in place when they tried to break in.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Of course, the DummyAgents were standing all across the street, and dogs running at greater than 20mph do not stop or turn on short notice very well. Neither do cars chasing after the dogs trying to catch up, for that matter. Thus, if the agents got bowled over by on rushing dogs, or had to jump and roll to avoid being hit by a car, well, it was their own fault, clearly, no sense getting tetchy about it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They got tetchy about it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Very, </span>
  <em>
    <span>very</span>
  </em>
  <span> tetchy.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The Twin Keepers had ...borrowed a car quickly, though not quite fast enough to catch up as soon as they'd have liked. It was only by Warren remembering their Rules of Dessert and that they knew Tatiana was bound to have some combined with Mishka's knowledge of the Doverskya house that allowed them to catch up to the boys as quickly as they did, about 2 minutes later than the optimal time window.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>KGB was everywhere, for some reason, and clogged up the whole width of the street. Warren watched with horror as the dogs tried to slow only to skid into half a dozen agents before being beyond and rounding to a more dignified stop some three houses beyond. It was only as the boys came to a stop a breath after their car had turned on to Tatya's street that he realized they, too, were not going to be able to stop in time, and the damned government goons were Just Standing There.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>This was </span>
  <em>
    <span>not</span>
  </em>
  <span> going to be good.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Half were already pulling their guns and turning to aim at the boys, apparently convinced this was an organized attack, and not the ridiculous accident from hell that it was. The freshly bombed remains of a house at least gave some logic to their hair-trigger conclusions, even if it was stupid. He couldn't decide if it was fortunate or unfortunate that the ones in the car's trajectory retained enough awareness to dodge just barely fast enough to not be run over. Mishka and Warren shared half a glance as the agents began firing at the car, some running to their own vehicles, and others running after the twins.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Kaven, keep driving, we'll get the boys.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mishka and Warren dove out of the car to snatch up the boys and secure them, while Kaven began ...offensive evasion driving. Honestly, Warren had seen the Widow's driving, and she might well be less terrifying behind the wheel than Kaven. (Durriken would chuckle later,</span>
  <em>
    <span> “Did no one tell you? Kaven is not allowed to drive for several good reasons.”</span>
  </em>
  <span>) Colin and Caddell fired their crossbows at the milling, angered agents (MiniTaser Bolts!) with disturbing accuracy, temporarily stunning the most threatening opponents, even as Warren passed Colin to Mishka and dove into the fray, giant dogs beside him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The cheering of the boys suddenly cut off at a loud crash down the street, where Kaven had swerved, and an agent had not, around a factory shipment of paint. Kaven's car, and what few remaining agent cars there were, screeched to a stop just as a chartreuse rain thoroughly coated them, making them entirely inoperable, wipers just could not compete with the deluge of thick, weather-resistant paint.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Warren lost track of things rather quickly, then, as he and the hounds kept a good dozen of the Russian agents too busy to take after the boys, and Kaven led more on a merry chase through the city towards the markets – and backup – and Mishka guarded the boys. It would take them several hours after it was all over to get all the events mostly sorted out into a vague timeline, and some questions would never be answered.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>War' and Kaven did keep most of the Dummies busy, but still, a handful ignored the grown up chaos makers and headed for Mishka and the twins, who retreated to a nearby apartment building, but Mishka took a stand in the building's cramped, narrow stairwell and the boys were on their own, running for the roof. Unca Clin' told them to always get the high ground. Mama told them to run first, fight later. NatMonster said to cheat whenever possible.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Colin “boogie trapped” the stairs behind them while Caddell picked the lock on the roof access.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It didn't buy them enough time.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They were still debating how mad Mam was going to be when the door burst open to reveal three very angry, sopping wet, paint splattered, and bruised Russian agents, short circuiting their plans. A bit of signage board, the convenient slope of the roof, and the fresh snow meant that they were able to still follow the rules, but Mam was gonna be VERY mad at them. NatMonster, too. Not even Unca Clin' was allowed to impofize snowboards offa roofs. Unca Clin' does it anyways, but he allus gets in trouble for it. The look on the Dummy faces was worth it, though.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The raven whose nest they Did. Not. Hit. (barely) was much less entertaining.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Fleeing from the enraged bird, they ran down the fire escape on the far side of the building. War' was on the near side, but from what they'd seen soaring over the gap of the alley, he was rather...busy at the moment.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The rest of the Rom and Bratva were either at, or on their way to, the marketplace for the day's work, and Kaven had headed in that direction. The boys were tired, 'ventures are hard work, especially when Dummies show up, but Unca Phil said to go for backup, and back up was at the marketplace. Auntie Mel said that if you can't run, hide.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The twins traded quotes from their favorite grown ups as they figured out what to do next. Dr. Gevard from SCI-Div said the shortest path between two points was a straight line, so to shorten their trip and hide while walking, because their grown ups told them these things, they cut through the yards and alleys of the houses around them, the vegetable gardens were all under snow, but there were bread rolls of some sort on a window ledge, and a nanny goat hadn't been milked in far too long, her kid being kept in a separate pen. </span>
</p>
<p><span>Which was just. </span><b>Not.</b> <em><span>Nice.</span></em></p>
<p>
  <span>No one was in the house, and Caddell couldn't hear any pursuit yet, so Colin carried the tiny baby goat over to his ma, and Caddell worked to get the burrs and knots from their fur, while Colin got them both some milk. Warm goats milk is NOT like the milk at home, and they wrinkled their noses at it, but it was warm, and filling, and they were cold, hungry, and thirsty, even if it tasted funny.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>In the next yard they stopped to pet a cantankerous elderly hen who was guarding the other hens and chicks in her coop.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>In the fourth yard, they learned to fear geese. Geese are </span>
  <em>
    <span>evil.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Even Caddell couldn't charm them. They had all sorts of new bruises by the time they hit the alleyway, and Colin rubbed his very sore rump. Who knew geese bit?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They were almost rested and nearly to the market when Caddell's sharper ears caught the sounds of War' and Mishka fighting the Dummies.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>[They haven't met Auntie Laura yet, but she'd be </span>
  <em>
    <span>most</span>
  </em>
  <span> disappointed at the trail of open gates and holes in fences left behind the boys.]</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Not long after Kaven had arrived at the market to rouse the Rom, and what Bratva were near enough to hear, the two boys came running straight for him,</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span> chased by geese,</span>
</p>
<p> <span>chased by a chicken,</span></p>
<p> <span>chased by a nanny goat and her kid,</span></p>
<p>  <span>chased by the two dogs,</span></p>
<p> <span>chased by Mishka,</span></p>
<p> <span>chased by Warren,</span></p>
<p> <span>chased by a dozen armed agents, each bearing signs of bruises, cuts, or …paint? Three were </span><em><span>definitely</span></em><span> covered in paint.</span></p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>The market froze for a moment, until an agent aimed his weapon at a toddler in full view of the market's wives and mothers. Then... it erupted.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Nanny goat bit, kicked, and headbutt anyone who got near HER boys.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Shop keeps threw produce.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Roma threw elbows and fists.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Bratva threw Molotovs.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Someone got video of the baby goat pissing on a KGB agent's boot.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Geese bit and hissed at everything that moved.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dogs bounded in and out of the fray, merrily biting away at the ankles, heels, and thighs of agents who had no idea what they were getting into today when they made the mistake of getting out of bed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Kaven lifted Colin to his shoulders and helped him pack ice-shard-laden snow balls that they then both threw at agents who got a bit too close to actually hurting anyone else.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Caddell was perched happily on Mishka's hip, where he merrily informed the other toughs that their molotovs would be so much better if they </span>
  <em>
    <span>just...</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>(It didn't escape either boy's notice that War', who'd taken up the spot in front of the boys to keep the agents back, wasn't actually throwing bottles like everyone else thought he was.)</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The Agents never got close.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Things were just finishing up, the vast majority of the KGB restrained by the populace, when The Aunties pulled up in their truck and the Borzoi trotted up with her captive, who had tried to escape.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sharon was less than happy.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Peggy was </span>
  <em>
    <span>delighted.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The boys </span>
  <em>
    <span>actually</span>
  </em>
  <span> took their nap, for once.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It took three hours to get the market set to rights, another four to get reports written, half an hour was spent begging into Romanoff's and Barton's voice mails, three hours of eating and partying that seemed to encompass the entire city (Tatiana cooked, and seemed like she'd never been happier than she was cooking for the whole city), and an hour just to get Peggy, her new assistant Katka, the boys and all their new acquisitions packed up onto the jet.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ciara was going to </span>
  <em>
    <span>kill</span>
  </em>
  <span> her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>As long as Sharon got a shower first, she didn't much care.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Washington DC, 12:05 pm</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“...Hill, please tell me Barton and Romanoff are here.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Five minutes out, sir”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Good. Tell them to skip debrief. We have a voicemail-checking party to attend. Tell Nat to bring her vodka. I have a feeling we'll need it.”</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Translations:<br/>Rai - Sir, very formal, high respect.<br/>Kako - Uncle, but can be used for any older-male.<br/>Purodad - grandfather, which is how Warren sees him.<br/>Chikni - son.<br/>Phuro - a title Elder or councilman. (plural is Phuri)<br/>Phuri dae - wise woman, the Elder of the vitsa representing the women and children.</p>
<p>Durriken is very... unusual from what I can find research wise in balancing Tradition and modernizations, however, I suspect that being born in late 1919, being one of the few who got to go to an actual Roma school pre-Stalin, and then living through Stalin's forced assimilation programs, Nazi occupation and the genocides involved, the fall of the USSR, computers, space programs, civil rights revolutionS, plural, and so on, would do that. Unlike some, he remembers all the good, and all the bad, and did not get bitter, but kinder.<br/>Bergamo:<br/>Bergamo, Italy. Google maps turns up three possible locations for "Azzano, Italy," where Captain America became a Thing. All are in the north nearish the border and fairly close together. Bergamo, Italy a) has an International Airport ( Orio al Serio, if you were wondering) and b) is almost exactly in the middle of the three. This is the Key phrase identifying Ekaterina to Peggy. The answering code response is that the Alps are as miserable as Katenka's Papa claimed...Katenka is one of Bucky &amp; Darcy's Girls.</p>
<p>Rubidium and potassium:<br/>Rubidium is an alkali metal a bit farther down the column from Sodium, right after Potassium, in fact. One: Alkali metals a) react immediately and violently with water and are very exothermic b) Alkali anything reacts with acids (which sewage usually contains) producing heat, gas, and water. The two facts together, in a pressurized environment is explossive. Two: 30 grams is slightly more than 1/16th of a pound, about the same as 1/4th of a stick of butter in weight, in terms of chemistry, however, this is a LOT. 1/6th of this in a non-pressurized container of water was still very impressive, and THAT was considered a lot.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0016"><h2>16. Aftermath</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <h3>
  <span>What Happens in Moldova (Does Not Stay in Moldova)</span>
</h3>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Ciara was… irked. Irked was a good word. She hated Moldova, with a passion that nearly rivaled her hatred for red plaid. It was </span>
  <em>
    <span>supposed</span>
  </em>
  <span> to be a cakewalk, a minor nuclear problem. It Was Not a Cakewalk. Some asshole shot her hair(she had a Space Balls moment), another bit was singed from a chemical fire, and there were two retired CIA agents, one of whom was a lunatic, the other had brought his lunatic girlfriend, running about causing chaos but apparently on the same mission she was on, as a favor to </span>
  <em>
    <span>somebody.</span>
  </em>
  <span> The Manual DOES NOT cover Retired CIA agents who refuse to stay retired, and she COULD NOT get Coulson OR Fury on the phone, and her handler was an idiot, and she wasn’t even going to try going that route.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Finally, she did the Not At All Approved SHIELD Method. She helped herself to their alcohol and waited for them on their couch. If they were going to do the same mission, they could at least not get in each other’s way. That required talking, which her employers generally preferred agents to avoid doing. Fuck her employers’ preferences. They weren’t here with burned hair and stupid shoes. (Somebody in Supplies had taken her Docs and replaced them with Standard Issues. Standard Issues did such a number on most feet, some field agents called them Standing Issues. And they were ugly as sin to boot. Hah.)</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Naturally, when the NotSoRetired agents returned, the crazy one was already digging in his Stuffed Pig Of Doom. Crazy does not equal unobservant. Ciara sighed and waved a remote at him. “If I was here to attack you in any way, I would already have killed you. I’m not CIA, thankyewverymuch. Those asshats entirely deserved what they got last month. Only a criminally stupid agency like the CIA would try to kill agents good enough to actually retire. I’m in Moldova on SHIELD business, which keeps ending up either nearly getting you shot, or you nearly getting </span>
  <em>
    <span>me</span>
  </em>
  <span> shot. I, most notably, have no orders at all on you. I’d rather not continue stepping on each other’s toes.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Well, the girlfriend believed her, at least. And the somewhat sane guy looked to be at least considering it. Paranoia is as paranoia does, though, and Crazy was not convinced in the least that she wasn’t going to slaughter all of them. Ciara sighed, put down the remote, and downed the rest of her glass of very good Russian vodka while Crazy and Crazy Girlfriend argued about shooting her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“My name is Ciara Harrow, I’m a level 8 SHIELD agent. My father was Lt. Col. Johnathan Harrow, yes, </span>
  <em>
    <span>that</span>
  </em>
  <span> one, and I grew up next door to Director Nicholas J. Fury. I have a pair of three year old twins who routinely make life hellishly </span>
  <em>
    <span>interesting</span>
  </em>
  <span> for every other agent on base, especially if they don’t like the agent in question. I’m </span>
  <em>
    <span>here</span>
  </em>
  <span> and not </span>
  <em>
    <span>there</span>
  </em>
  <span> because the BossMan got flak for not sending all his best agents out all at once so that someone would be available to keep my boys occupied, which means that </span>
  <em>
    <span>someone unqualified</span>
  </em>
  <span> for the special hazard of watching my twins is doing so while I’m here wasting time trying to work around your crazy. Now. Who are you and how are you going to help me get back to my boys before they burn down the agency I work for?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Crazy stopped arguing for a moment, and Less Crazy looked at her funny.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Where is their father?” Girlfriend asked.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Classified and we don’t talk about him anyways. For Reasons.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ah.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Girlfriend got it, at least, though the men seemed to be more confused. Probably more to do with being men than anything else.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Girlfriend cleared the issue up for them, “Everybody has a crazy asshole ex they don’t talk about if they can help it. Him being classified only makes it so she CAN avoid talking about him indefinitely.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The light bulbs went on.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Frank Moses, pleased to meet you Ma’am,” said Less Crazy.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Frank, are you insane?” asked Crazy.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Do you remember the guy we disappeared for Victoria that one time in Argentina?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes, of course…. Oh.” Crazy’s face shifted. “Call me Marvin. Do you like bombs?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hah. You might say that. I have a habit of turning whatever is on hand into bombs when bored. Don’t turn on the light in your bathroom without changing the bulb first, by the way. You took longer than expected to get here.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I like her, Frank,” Marvin said softly. “She feels… right. To the thing in my head.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Your insanity?” Girlfriend asked.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No, the other thing.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Maybe we can talk about that later,” Frank said with a sigh. “Ma’am, this is Sara Ross.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Not related to the OTHER Ross’ I hope? The General is an Ass.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>"Uncle Thad can suck ten thousand moldy dicks."</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I am sooo sorry.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Me too, if you know him. Booze? We have some still, I hope.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I only drank the one glass, and, if I can reach her today, Black Widow can get us some better vodka.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You know the Black Widow?” Marvin asked, admiringly.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“She’s basically my sister in law. The boys call her their NatMonster. She’s their favorite aunt.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Frank Moses was starting to look very worried. Marvin, more engaged. The two occurrences were probably related.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ciara’s HERO phone pinged, and she read through the file attached to an email she was CC’ed on quickly. “Mother. Of. God. I think I’m going to need more booze, too.” She did something with her phone and turned the phone so they could read the report themselves, but couldn’t change the screen except to scroll.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Marvin and Frank read through the report of the absolute chaos her twins had caused in Russia in less than 48 hours while Sara poured a large glass of vodka for Ciara. Marvin was delighted, Frank couldn’t seem to decide if he was impressed or horrified….which was the usual reaction to seeing her boys at work. Three year olds are not supposed to both out agent the agents AND out-chaos everyone including villains.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We’re keeping them,” Marvin announced.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Marvin, they aren’t dogs,” Frank sighed, “You can’t just KEEP them.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Why not?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Because they are people who already have a home.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Mine’s better.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yours is a bunker underground, which is not conducive to active three year old boys.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“...Why else?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You apparently have to fight the Black Widow for them.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“...oh.” Marvin thought about it. “She may live in the bunker too.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Absolutely not!” Sara insisted. “Human women </span>
  <em>
    <span>not</span>
  </em>
  <span> on the run from hostile government killers are not to be subjected to your house keeping. If you want to invite her, you have to hire a maid. I know you will not hire a maid, so you may keep neither Ciara’s children nor the Black Widow.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You are, however, welcome to visit us any time I’m not on a mission somewhere, and I’ll get you on the list Uncle Nick keeps of my approved contacts that SHIELD doesn’t get to know about,” Ciara cajoled, taking back her phone and moving towards the door, “I need to read someone a riot act, I’ll be back momentarily to plan a solution to our ‘minor nuclear problem’.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She dialed as she walked, “Поставьте меня на спикер. Наталья Алиановна Романова, тебе лучше быть моей добывающей командой, и тебе лучше принести мне лучшую проклятую водку…” The closing of the door cut off the rest of her tirade, but Marvin finally looked scared. Even crazy men know better than to mess with the Mom Voice.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Frank sighed. Again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When Nat and Coulson landed at the designated place to pick up Ciara, they found not one person waiting for them, but four. Natasha Immediately turned on the BugZapper, and lowered the ramp.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ciara, Nat’s got the zapper on, any bugs will be scrambled. You didn’t say we had guests.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I knew she’d know to do that. I wasn’t going to speak for them until after I had their permission to. Phil Coulson, meet Frank Moses, Marvin Boggs, and Sara Ross, unfortunately related to the Other One, which we will not speak of again.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I understand. Frank, Marvin. Never did think you’d stay retired. Welcome aboard, Black Widow is piloting. Ciara, Hawkeye is at home with the boys...and the animals they adopted. He’ll be taking the hen and goat at least, out to his sister’s farm after we get there.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>As the ramp came back up and possessions were stored, Tasha came into the cargo area. A single raised eyebrow turned on Ciara, “Well we know where your boys get it from. I’m not sure if they have better taste in adoptions or you do, though. Theirs include a cantankerous chicken from hell and a goat kid caught on youtube pissing on a KGB boot mid-riot. Yours include Moses and Boggs. I think you’re about even.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Marvin paused and looked confused, “Wait, am I the goat or the chicken?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The chicken,” everyone deadpanned simultaneously.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Also,” Tasha added, “You’re still wearing a dress. That’s fine if you like it, I think the floral print is quite nice. Clint would like it for an apron. He likes his aprons. But if you don’t, there’s changes of clothes in the bin behind you.”</span>
</p>
<hr/>
<h3>
  <span>Boredom and Counting Coup</span>
</h3>
<p>
  <span>Red Hat: Honestly, Occulus. Those boys are BORED. You know their adults, and what happens when THEY get bored. What do you expect?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Occulus: And what do you think I should do about that?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Red Hat: You're a smart man. Find something </span>
  <em>
    <span>useful</span>
  </em>
  <span> for them to do, and not in the chatterbox.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Red Hat has signed off.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Fury sighed. 20 years retired and the woman still made him feel twelve. What could 3 year olds do that was useful?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The boys were bored, and Clint was well aware of how hazardous that could be, so when he responded to the Code Chartreuse to find them on the ground floor, armed to the teeth and glaring at a particularly nervous looking fellow, fresh from the Academy, from the look of him, he was hardly surprised. Handing the poor fellow off to the chortling security team, he thought quickly for a distraction for the boys.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Buchalli, how about I take you home to get your kilts and woad?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Si, gracias!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ja, bitte!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And so, all three kilted up and painted with blue face paint in designs Clint pulled from one of Ciara's books, they pulled their SHEILD-provided SUV, which was kept with car seats in case of Harrows Babysitting emergency needs, back into the garage. Clint was still thinking furiously for the next diversion to keep them busy with, when Colin announced that he was hungry, not even an hour after lunch, while Clint parked the car, giving Clint an idea. “How about a game that ends in snacks?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Whats 'e game?” Caddell asked warily, clearly worried he was about to pull a Mary Poppins on them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Get to the cafeteria, but there are rules.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What rules?” Colin asked suspiciously.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Clint slowed down, the wrong rules would get him killed, by Ciara, Fury, or </span>
  <em>
    <span>both.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“First, don't get caught until you get to the cafeteria. Second, you have to bring me, from three </span>
  <em>
    <span>different</span>
  </em>
  <span> offices, a desk name plate, a dragon or sword shaped paperweight, and an electric stapler. Use the ducts to navigate. Last, you have the length of one Curious George episode to get 3 items, 100 points, and get to the cafeteria. You can get ten points for each item taken, five points for each air vent you tie with a green string, and 25 points for each agent you get a woad handprint on, without getting caught. Any questions?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Grinning almost evilly, the boys shook their heads no.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Alright then,” Clint nodded, pulling out a tablet and opening the car doors, waiting for them to unbuckle. “Ready? Set? GO!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And they were off, re-arming faster even than Clint did mid-mission. Clint set the tablet to following their trackers and pulling security feeds as he took to the vents behind the boys, heading for shortcuts he hadn't taught them yet.</span>
</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Monday, 1345: </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Please note, if you have received this memo, you have failed the new security training game. Your items will be returned to you shortly. Report to Romanoff Remedial tomorrow at 0800.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>45 minutes earlier:...</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ready? Set? GO!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>Shikoba was heating up a cup of oats in her under-desk microwave when she spied a hand going for her stapler.  Her mind flashed back through the recent memos, and she picked up the stapler before it could vanish for reasons unknown.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What exactly are you two doing in my office?” she asked the culprits, standing guiltily at her desk.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Playin’ a game with Unca Clint,” said one tiny, blue-faced Mannegishi as the other did something with yarn.  “We had’ta get certain things, and get to the caf… but wifout getting caught.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well,” she began, smiling, “you’re not caught if you get out without me raising an alarm.  What sorts of things, aside from my stapler, did you need to get?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“A name plate, a dragon or sword shaped paperweight, an a ‘lectric stapler,” the first one recited.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“An we get points for marking ducts, and getting han’prints on agents who aren’t looking.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Barton has you counting coup?” Shikoba asked.  She knew she liked the man, but this was just too adorable.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Wha’s countin coo?” the one with the yarn asked.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Showing off by playing tag,” Shikoba said, neatly side-stepping issues that Ciara might think were too violent for boys not yet in school.  She might not, but one did not take chances with Ciara’s children.  “My family did that alot.  We also know better than to offend the Mannegishi, and you two look like the little tricksters, so I’m not taking chances.  I’ll offer you a deal instead.  Take this snack to your Auntie Tasha and leave my office supplies alone, and I won’t tell Clint I saw you.  Deal?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Deal,” said the first.  His brother set a little doll of green yarn by her stapler, and they took the saran-wrapped bar she offered them.  Tasha was always willing to try Shikoba’s attempts at traditional cooking, and usually let her know if the recipe needed to be tweaked before giving it to her girlfriend Suri.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Nat returned to her desk to find a smallish rectangle wrapped in plastic sitting squarely in the middle, where her detskiy monstry left things for her to find.  Unwrapping the treat, she found a note tucked into the plastic. Reading it swiftly, she smiled and went to find Shikoba, munching happily on the snack.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Clint has them counting coup. Wanna come watch? - S</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>In the privacy of his office, Coulson was quietly freaking out when his phone rang. He’d been out of his office exactly 45 seconds, the time it took to walk two doors down, refill his coffee, and come back. In that time, his collectible Captain America shield paperweight had gone missing. He’d paid...probably too much for it on ebay. And it was gone, with no one in sight. He may have answered the phone more tersely than he should have.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“YES?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Thought you should know, Clint has the twins counting coup. They have a very specific list of things to take, vents to mark, and direction to put handprints on agents without getting caught.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That list wouldn’t happen to include a shield paperweight, would it?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No, but I can imagine that they decided a sword paperweight and a dragon paperweight would be incomplete without a shield. I trust I’ll see you in Remedial tomorrow morning?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Nat…”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Phil.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“....Yes.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Good.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Phil sighed and hung up, staring at the phone for a minute, before beating his head repeatedly on his desk. Rubbing his face, he dumped half his coffee into his plant, George, and refilled it from the bottle of vodka Nat had given him last month. He downed half the mug before staring at the phone again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Finally, Phil sighed and picked up the phone, dialing a number.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Sir. Clint has found a way to entertain the boys. And Romanoff’s Remedial is probably going to be full again in the morning. … Yes, sir. …No, sir. … He has them counting coup against. agents …Because Nat was watching on the security cameras and called me, sir. I’ll need my schedule cleared tomorrow, sir. …They got my Cap paperweight.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The laughter on the other end of the line did NOT improve his mood any.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Harriet Pevensie-Welsch was reading while walking back to her office, a bad habit she never had managed to break.  Barring trips to other universes, there were only so many hours in a day, and all of them needed to be spent.  Besides, Grandma Su never approved of idleness.  Idleness led to spending time in other universes getting yourself at least nearly dead, at least twice over.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She even had a sculpture Great Aunt Lu had made of Uncle Stacy as a dragon to remind her of that very fact. Idleness and greed got Eustace turned into a dragon, productivity and humility turned him back.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She looked up to open her office door…. Which was the only reason she saw it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It” being skinny legs, little boy underwear, a lot of plaid, and a small, blue hand taking Uncle Stacy. In that order, hanging down from her vent. She barely managed a squeak of protest before the boy was up and vanishing back into the vent.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>"Gotta tell David there's another infestation of coblynau,” she sighed in frustration, “and let Coulson know I may be going Home.”  She sat at her desk, and picked up the phone to call Coulson.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sharon hated paperwork, with a fiery passion. She still DID it, unlike Clint, but she’d spent hours on this thrice damned report. More than ready for a break, she stretched and turned to get coffee from the pot on the other side of the room (she was determined to never be subject to the hazards of the coffee wars). A slight scraping sound was the only warning she had. Then there were two thumps and a flash of plaid, a giggle and the boys were out of the room and down the hall. Figuring the boys were playing, she shook her head and returned to her desk…. Where her Narsil replica paperweight and letter opener was no longer sitting on her desk.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“CLINT!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Storming to Coulson’s office, Sharon stopped short.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There was a line of shame-faced and annoyed agents. Joining Agent  Pevensie-Welsch at the end of the line, she took a moment to really look at the other agents, and almost burst out laughing. Four of them had Twins-sized blue hand prints on them. Two complained of missing electric staplers, one of a missing name plate. An agent from Sci Div had a hand-full of Colin-green yarn, apparently gathered from all over the labs, with concerns that they could fly off the vent and into some experiment or other.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She turned to Pevensie, asking, “What’d the twins get from you?” as the younger Agent May, Magenta, she recalled, joined the line morosely behind Sharon, a blue handprint on her face.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>With a half hearted glare at Sharon’s amused look, Magenta answered the unasked question, “They were aiming for my shoulder while my back was turned. I turned into it when I heard a noise. Little devils scarpered while I couldn’t see.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“They took my dragon paperweight,” Pevensie added sadly.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And my Lord of the Rings sword letter opener.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Clint was enjoying every bit of the game he’d made up for the boys, watching with snacks on his tablet each point scored, and the various reactions afterwards, in the vents near the cafeteria. A small offshoot, in fact, his preferred shortcut from the lower level gym to the cafeteria. He was, at the moment, quietly chortling his way through Sitwell discovering his very expensive, engraved and gold-plated glass name plate was missing. It was the second plate to go missing. Clint wasn’t sure if the boys were being over-achievers, or had lost count of their points, or both, but they were nearly at 400 at this point. MiniMay’s tagging had been the best, so far.  But Jasper losing his MIND was coming a decent second.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And then someone grabbed his ankle, hard. Clint swore as his head hit the roof of the duct, he almost didn’t hear the giggle behind him.  Almost.  He froze.  Ciara was going to kill him for teaching the boys those words…waitaminnute… The giggling got louder, and was followed by soft shuffling of the boys crawling away. He hit his head again, the duct was too narrow for him to turn around in. Groaning and muttering imprecations under his breath, Clint put the tablet away and headed to the cafeteria, time was almost up. Honestly, even if they were late, it should probably still count as a win…Dammit.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Fury was grinning. He was well aware of how much that terrified the agents as he passed, he really didn’t care. The problem Peggy had posed him was solved, and it was even useful - the building could always use fresh security reviews.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hill,” he called into her office as he passed, “Join me in the cafeteria.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Sir.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Coulson fill you in?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“About the boys counting coup? Yes.” Hill seemed rather amused, probably, as Fury was, because so many supposedly top agents had been hit. If the twins could get one over on you, you’d been slacking and needed more training.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m making it a sanctioned, random, vaguely weekly training game and security review.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Excellent, sir. Losing agents go to Romanoff’s Remedial?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Of course. Surprise Dodge-ball/wrench/hammer is just the thing they need.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“She’ll be happy. She loves tormenting agents in Remedial.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It IS effective.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Order SciDiv to issue nerf guns to all personnel in-house. I’d really rather no one ACTUALLY shoot the twins.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes, sir.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She turned to her tablet to issue the order as they got off the elevator and turned towards the caf, where Barton was pleading with the kitchen staff to give him an icepack, a blue mark wrapped around his ankle.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Maria burst into laughter, Fury’s grin grew, but he took pity on Barton, “Give the man an ice pack, he probably does need it. I like the kilt Barton. I think you should keep it, it’ll mark you three as friendlies next time.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Next time, sir?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You did your job a little too well, Barton, the boys were entertained, and we know who has been letting their skills lapse. I’m sanctioning this as a training game and security review, to occur at  random times not less than a week apart, and not more than two weeks.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Perhaps the overseeing agent, or agents should be more directly involved, though,” Hill suggested through her giggles, as a vent opened and the boys climbed down into the room.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Did we make it in time? We had ta go te long way.” said the one on the left.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“By my watch, you did,” Fury grinned at his nephews, “Go get dessert. …By the way, how much were you supposed to get?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hun’red points. But we weren’t sure if that was f’r one a us or bof of us.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“How many points DID you get?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“...We lost count.” said one. “Twice,” the other added.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“415,” Clint answered.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Fury laughed. Maria laughed. Clint sorta chuckled, but it made his head hurt. Colin and Caddell were too busy with cookies and brownies to care.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Translation:<br/>“Поставьте меня на спикер. Наталья Алиановна Романова, тебе лучше быть моей добывающей командой, и тебе лучше принести мне лучшую проклятую водку…”<br/>Put me on speaker. Natalia Alianovna Romanova, You had better be my extraction team, and you had better bring me the best goddamn vodka ever<br/>Notes:<br/>"The light bulbs went on"- they suddenly understood.<br/>Victoria is the MI6 agent played by Helen Miren.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Mannegishi are much like brownies and sprites, but of North American Native folklore. (Bairn adds: They're diminutive tricksters that tip boats, and are mostly talked of among the Cree and Ojibwa, although Shikoba is Choctaw/Apache. She tends to pick up bits of culture here and there where she can because she abhors culture-loss.)</p>
<p>Harriet Pevensie-Welsch IS THAT Su Pevensie's granddaughter. David is her Uncle that got lost under his bed at 12. (Bairn adds: David is the dimension hopper of the middle generation, Susan's kids, and he'd be the one sent to clean out an incursion from anywhere more magical.)</p>
<p>Coblynau are mythical gnome-like creatures that are said to haunt the mines and quarries of Wales and England. In reality, some areas of UK's bedrock are just below the barrier to a fairy dimension, and deep mines sometimes open doorways, resulting in David Pevensie cursing a lot and hitting his head on mine supports as he convinces them this place isn't worth their time.</p>
<p>Narsil is one of the two named swords in Lord of the Rings.</p>
<p>Magenta May, who we have here as Melinda May's niece, is Magenta from Sky High. Warren is totally laughing at her, and she hates him just a little bit, while wondering why she let her aunt talk her into SHIELD.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0017"><h2>17. The Continuing Adventures</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Ciara takes a much-needed vacation and takes the boys out to the Barton Farm for a much-needed education.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Regarding Timelines: the first two sections of this chapter happen directly following the Adventures With Carter arc. The third section and onward begins June 11, 2011. (The twins birthday is strategically at the end of Ciara's vacation week so that there's a maximum of sated-for-adventure in the boys and a minimum of 'Agent Harrow needs to go back in the field' from the WSC. She can't go back in the field, she has paperwork built up.)</p>
<p>Translations up top because I ran out of space at the bottom:<br/>Translations:<br/>Pleistocene era: the geological epoch of megafauna.<br/>Ovcharkas: Caucasian Shepherd Dogs<br/>Kozlenok: kid, baby goat.<br/>Kozel: goat.<br/>GED: high school equivalency exam.<br/>Moonshine/shine: homemade alcohol.<br/>Dry county/home: place where alcohol is banned.<br/>Sneaking shoes: Lila's term for the high-tech spy shoes Nat gives her every time she goes up a shoe size.<br/>An 'vance: Toddler for "an advance"<br/>Maker: Toddler for 'marker' or IOU, a promise of future payment.<br/>Fannies: rear ends, used as a light swear to mean "I'm very mad" in polite southern lady.<br/>Maze-bolt: A bolt lock for the extra smart goat.<br/>Francophone Scrabble: French language Scrabble, the word-making game with the tiles.<br/>Not-high-chairs: Tripp Trapp chairs, an excellent work around for a family with variable sizes in kids. They look like this.<br/>Emoting: shows emotion, like smiling.<br/>Javeaux: deposits of sand and silt due to the overflow of a watercourse (French)<br/>Deti: children (Russian)<br/>Martian Chess: a pyramid game from Looney Labs. It's a good 4 player chess game.<br/>Chucklehead: idiot.<br/>Circuit Judge: the traveling judge that serves rural areas too small to have a courthouse or a local judge.<br/>Tri’skellington: Twin for the Triskelion, the headquarters of SHIELD.<br/>Sandpaper face: stubble or five o'clock shadow. Not a beard, but also not clean shaven.<br/>Micks: a derogatory term for Irish people.<br/>Wrapped around a tree: crashed into a tree.<br/>Sugaring a tank: putting sugar in a gas tank, which wrecks the engine.<br/>Skinheads: common slang for neo-nazis or other militant jackasses.<br/>Apparate: the teleportation used in the Harry Potter books.<br/>Full Arachnid: Natasha's Black Widow mode, cold, cruel, calculating.<br/>Detki: kids<br/>We'll be in our bunk: Firefly-fandom slang for having sex.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Laura Barton tapped her foot impatiently as she waited at the tree-line for Clint to finish landing the jet.  Anything important enough to have her keeping Lila home from day-care and getting into Clint’s renovation supplies had better be worth it.  Finally, her brother-in-law lowered the ramp and stepped out, flanked by two small ponies pretending to be dogs.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hi Laura!  I brought you those farm dogs you said you wanted!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I meant maybe a German shepherd or a lab mix, Clint,” Laura sighed as Lila shrieked and demanded to be set down.  “Why is my toddler playing with an escapee from the Pleistocene era?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Because ovcharkas are a very friendly breed,” Natasha said, neatly dodging the question.  “I will be in the barn setting up a bed for the kozlenok.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Kozle… kozel, a goat!?!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You wanted more farm animals,” Clint said with a shit eating grin.  “And the Harrow Twins would be devastated if we gave their rescue goat and it’s chicken mama to some faceless petting zoo.  Actually, the hen shouldn’t go to a petting zoo, she’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>testy.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What were Ciara’s boys doing rescuing goats?” Laura asked, then had a flash of what would result in the Harrow boys rescuing a goat, and Clint showing up with two large dogs of Russian extraction.  “Never mind, tell whoever it was I’ll get a jar of the good stuff ready for them.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s Sharon,” Clint said, ducking his head and running a hand through his hair.  “Make it apple cinnamon?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Done,” Laura agreed.  “One jar of That’s Amore and she leaves you alive.  I need one sensible adult male around here.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Barney still being Barney?” Clint asked.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I have him pulling rocks out of the front forty right now,” Laura admitted.  “He’ll be happy to see you, it means less time trying to stay out of bars.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>&lt;^&gt;</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Clint, we need to talk,” Laura said to him after Lila was successfully down for the night.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That’s not good,” he replied.  “But we should, yeah.  I’m sorry about springing the goat and hen and dogs on you.  I should have called ahead, but frankly we were all fresh off the Voicemail Party and I didn’t want to risk a no.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re ridiculous, baby brother,” she sighed and ruffled his hair.  On one hand, he hated that, and he hated being the baby of the family, but on the other, it meant that she forgave him.  “I meant about the Harrow Boys.  They need something more stimulating that they’re getting if they end up smuggling home livestock from Russia.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I never said Russia,” Clint said quickly.  He knew Laura wasn’t a threat, but clearances are clearances.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You didn’t have to,” Laura told him.  “Natasha handed me a list of commands for the dogs in Russian, and she spent the afternoon looking at that hen taking care of the kid and sighing.  That means someone was in Russia, and I know it wasn’t you two or she’d have completely different dinner-ruining sweets for Lila and Cooper.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fair enough,” Clint agreed happily.  He was glad Laura put things together well enough that he didn’t have to lie to her.  “So what do you want me to do?  The lesson plans are pretty firmly laid out and I can’t move them onto anything more complex until next year.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Invite Ciara to come out here with the boys for her vacation week.  I can teach them basic gardening and keep them busy with physical labor and she can nap in the guest room.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You don’t have a guest room,” Clint pointed out.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re right, I don’t… yet.”  Laura grinned and handed him a hammer and a page from a decor magazine showing a before of a back porch and an after of a partially rustic bedroom in blue and white.  “That’s what you get for giving my kids a Caucasian Shepherd and a Russian Wolfhound.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Aww fuc-” Clint broke off abruptly as Laura’s eyebrow shot up.  “Futz?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>&lt;^&gt;</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ciara hadn’t been sure what to think when Clint stopped by her house at four am a few weeks after the Irkutsk Incident with an offer that sounded a lot like an order to come by his super secret, super hidden, farmhouse on her vacation so the boys could see the dogs they’d somehow come home with.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Two crap-fest missions where she had to wear heels and one rather fun one where she had to improvise a hang glider out of an exploding high rise in a city that was supposed to be irradiated beyond all livability later, and she decided that if his sister really did have a massive spa bathroom, then Ciara wanted in.  It didn’t hurt that he’d mentioned once that Laura had a certain amount of skill as a hair stylist, and Ciara’s hair was still singed from the chemical fire on her last mission.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>After landing the jet at the spot Clint had shown her and trudging up the path with the boys, who thought it was great fun, Ciara was ready for a glass of something alcoholic and a bath.  It was tempting to pull Natasha’s favorite ‘you, I like’ maneuver and breeze in towards the shower, but she resolved to say hello first.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She was greeted at the door of the Barton homestead with a hug from a boy who from the many stories was Cooper and her kids were greeted with muffins from a woman who must be Laura.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“First you eat, then you help me weed the veggie garden, milk the goats, and gather eggs,” Laura told them.  “You’re going to be busy little men this week.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“She means it,” Cooper warned, ten years old and worldly with it.  “Mom doesn’t like it when kids are unoccupied, she says it gives us </span>
  <em>
    <span>ideas.</span>
  </em>
  <span>  But if you help her keep Lila busy, that’d be great.  She’s about your age.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Caddell and Colin shared that look they sometimes got.  Ciara debated for a minute if this should worry her, then decided in favor of moving to examine the cookie jars.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Yes.  Jars.  Plural.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She probably should have expected a kitchen that hosted Clint Barton to have a full shelf of cookie jars, but somehow it floored her.  They ranged from vintage decorative ceramic (one looked like a Franciscan Monk and had the inscription ‘Thou Shalt Not Steal’ on it), to apothecary jars in clear glass with different stoppers, to modern plastic molded to look like Cookie Monster.  Of course, Caddell zeroed in on that one.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ah ap ap ap,” Laura chided.  “The cookies are sorted according to when we earn them.  You may have a Cookie Monster chocolate chip cookie after half an hour gardening work or one hour school work.  They get harder to earn the more fragile the jar is.  And the ones from here over,” she indicated the left half of the shelf, in the old white china and brown stoneware, “are adult only cookies, so that we don’t hog yours and you don’t hog ours.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Colin narrowed his eyes and Ciara felt like sighing.  “It’s Laura and Unca Clint’s house, boys, so their house rules apply.  Why don’t you play with the dogs a bit?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Lila should be up from her nap soon,” Cooper said.  “I’ll introduce you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The boys distracted, Laura pulled down a decent knock off Wedgewood jar and opened it, releasing a strong, woody scent.  “Fruitcake rum ball?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes please.  You know those are going to get raided, right?  Maybe not the rum balls, they smell strongly enough, but the chocolate chip are doomed.  I assume Clint filled you in on what a Code Chartreuse is.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“He did,” Laura said, setting a plate with two dark balls the size and shape of golf balls in front of Ciara before doing something complex to the underside of the lid of the jar and replacing it on the shelf.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You seem less concerned than most people are.  I know other agents, ones with kids, who are scared of my boys.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Lila is the same age, and trust me, she got her self preservation instincts from the Barton side of the family, not mine.  We figured out ways to teach her how not to die before she gets to kindergarten,” Laura replied.  “So I figure the boys will try their shenanigans as usual, and when they do, they’ll learn a valuable lesson in threat assessment and asymmetrical warfare.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ciara raised a brow, her mouth full of rum ball.  The molasses and the candied fruit were gluing her tongue to her teeth and she could not care less, as it was heavenly.  Fortunately, Laura Barton was also fluent in Eyebrow.  This was the woman Natasha called her sister, so it made sense she would be.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“My house only </span>
  <em>
    <span>looks</span>
  </em>
  <span> like normal people live here.  If they think stealing my cookies is going to be easy, they need to learn threat assessment, and I’m happy to teach them.  The jars are booby trapped.  It’s a nice object lesson for people who are used to getting away with everything to run into someone who can out-sneak them.  Cookie Monster had his sound box modified to a pitch that tends to make humans queasy and dogs bark, for instance.  Nobody steals cookies in the Barton house.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That somehow both disturbs me and doesn’t surprise me,” Ciara said, finishing off two measures of rum pretending to be a cake ball.  “I think you’ve got this under control.  Barton mentioned a spa bathroom?  I need to soak out four covers and five countries worth of stress.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Down the hall on the left, blue trim on the door.  Basic supplies are in the basket, but if you want anything more advanced, it’s in the towel closet.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Scotch?” Ciara asked hopefully.  Laura pointed to the upper cabinet by the fridge.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Top shelf, in the safe, the password is three answers from a rotating list of GED questions.  There’s a post-it with the questions of the day on the front.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“A safe?  Most people just put a lock on the liquor cabinet when their kids get into high school.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“My whole family makes moonshine; it’s tradition and makes for good bribes when Clint needs them. We all keep the shine in safes, it’s a holdover from when the great grand parents lived in the wettest dry county in Virginia.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I see, that’s actually pretty interesting.  But a quiz?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It keeps Barney out of it.  I figure when he wants to drink at home badly enough to learn vector addition to get at it, he probably needs one.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Barney,” Ciara asked slowly, “not Cooper or Lila?”  She didn’t want to offend, but she also didn’t feel like staying for a week in a home where the wife treated her grown man of a husband like a small child.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“All the adult Bartons have had a problem with alcoholism at some point.  My house is a safe zone for Clint and Barney, so I keep the booze hard to get to.  I’d just declare us a dry home, but I know what happens when they really can’t self-medicate at home.  Clint’s better about it, so he can unlock the rum balls and the questions aren’t that hard for him, but Barney is neither intellectually inclined nor good at figuring out when he needs to deal with his problems.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So why’d you marry him?” Ciara asked, licking sticky rum and brown sugar off her fingers.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So why’d you have the twins?” Laura countered, and poured a glass of milk.  “We’re not there yet.  Spend some time, get relaxed, let me teach your kids how to do farm work and we’ll see.  Clint likes you, so you might be family.  We’ll find out I guess.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ciara nodded and went to take a long, hot, decadent bubble bath.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Lila Barton was very aware her Mama was the strongest woman on the planet, ‘cept maybe Mama Nat, but Mama Nat was also Lila’s Mama, so it was the same thing.  She was also aware that her Mama didn’t tend to tell people that, ‘cause it might make them feel bad.  However, she felt it was only fair to warn the new boys what they were ‘bout to get into.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You don’t wanna do that,” she said, and the both startled and one fell off the chair he was using to climb onto the counter.  Lila rolled her eyes like Mama Nat taught her for when people were bein’ stupid.  It’s not like she was even wearing her sneaking shoes.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We wanna go on ‘ventures, and yeh need cookies for ‘ventures.  Issa rule,” said the one who hadn’t fallen.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, but you don’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>steal</span>
  </em>
  <span> cookies,” Lila pointed out.  “You </span>
  <em>
    <span>earn</span>
  </em>
  <span> cookies.  Or you ask real nice and get an ‘vance.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“An ‘vance?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, like a maker in betting.  Don’t tell Mama that Daddy taught me what those are.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Suddenly both boys were paying close attention.  Lila sighed and gestured for them to follow her into the craft room and pulled out paper and her special smelly crayons from Dada Clint.  An ‘vance was important, it deserved the special ones.  She picked out the purple one that smelled like grapes for her and wrote her name carefully at the top of the pink craft paper.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Now you write your names, an how many cookies you wanna owe me later.  Then I’ll ask Mama to give you those cookies from my special jar.  You can give me your cookies when you earn ‘em.  But you get one less than you owe me, ‘cause I’m givin you my cookies now.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The boys looked at her, then chattered in some language Lila didn’t know.  She only knew two ana half languages, because she was learning Spanish with Miss Marti and Russian from Mama Nat but she couldn’t read in Russian yet, ‘cause it used special letters.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Three cookies from me, an’ three from Caddell.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Kay.  Write that here, an I’ll go tell Mama to give you each two cookies.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The boys nodded solemnly.  At least they recognized the seriousness of cookie related matters, which was important.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was going to be a good week.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>&lt;^&gt;</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So,” Laura opened, as she finished trimming the singed bits off Ciara’s hair.  “I think my toddler is fleecing your toddlers for cookies.  They’ve worked out some kind of payday loan system.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Are they paying up?” Ciara asked, one red brow arching in the mirror.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So far, but I’ll have to give them more work if they keep it up.  Let me know when to cut them off.”  She checked the way the hair lay in back and handed Ciara the hand mirror.  “How’s that look?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Wonderful, thank you.  I was thinking I’d read some of a mystery novel I brought, do you need me for anything before I get lost in 1950’s Hong Kong?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Nope, go relax,” Laura said with a smile.  “I’ll go grab your boys from the yard for a lesson on egg gathering.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When she got to the yard, however, she decided that a different lesson was needed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Colin and Caddell Harrow!  Get your fannies on this porch this instant!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Two red headed  tots appeared, looking as innocent as can be.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Do you two want to tell me how the goats got on my roof?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Goats can climb really well,” said one of them.  Laura raised a brow.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m </span>
  <em>
    <span>aware.</span>
  </em>
  <span>  That’s why the goats are kept in a pen with five foot tall high-tensile wire walls.  I also know that no matter how good my goats are at opening loose latches, they aren’t able to open the maze-bolt on their gate.  Cooper’s been inside on the internet taking summer classes, and Lila went down for a nap after lunch when the goats were all in the closed pen.  Does anyone want to tell me who let the goats out?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The twins looked at each other.  Laura sighed.  “If you two ever want to be able to pay Lila back, you’re going to have to learn to close gates behind you.  Because now Uncle Clint is going to have to go on the roof to get goats down, and guess who gets to give him the cookies he earns from their supply?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Us?” said the quieter one, like he was hoping to be wrong.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yep. Now let’s go inside and wash up while Uncle Clint gets the goats put back.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Twin sighs of frustration sounded and Laura raised an eyebrow.  They had the good grace to look repentant, at least.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was going to be a long week.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>&lt;^&gt;</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>After Unca Clint got the last goat off the roof, falling onto a big pile of hay with the kid in his arms, Colin and Caddell each gave him cookies.  Then they gave Lila an extra cookie, because she had let them get some extra time to earn the rest because they got in trouble.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Lila was nice.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Cooper was nice too, but getting to be old enough t’ be getting stupid like some adults.  Not in a mean way, he just didn’t understand the rules of ‘ventures like Lila did.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Come on kidlets,” he said to them as they watched their cookies go mournfully.  “I have a fast way to earn more cookies.  Mom says you’re good at languages, and I’m learning French.  You wanna play Francophone Scrabble?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That seemed easy, and Colin thought it would probably make Laura stop being as mad if they stayed inside.  Caddell wanted to run around outside, but he had to agree with his brother and Laura was sorta like Nat Monster when she was mad, so they sat down on the firm square pillows in the living room around the low square table with the curvy legs, and let Cooper put out the game.  The board itself was regular, but the tiles came in a vertical blue-white-red striped bag, and not all the tiles looked exactly the same, like two-three sets at once.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Dad put it together for me when I said I wanted to learn,” Cooper said proudly.  “He’s not always around, but he tries when he is.  Do you want to go together to make it more even?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The twins agreed and the game began.  Colin and Caddell figured pretty quickly they knew more words and bounded ahead with words Cooper had to look up, but Cooper was a lot better at planning, and he was still slowly building his points when they had to resort to short words because of space.  When their tummies started grumbling, Mam came and took a picture with her phone, so nobody could complain of cheating, and helped them sit on the not-high-chairs.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They liked the not-high-chairs.  They were the same dark wood chairs as everyone else had, but Mam and Laura had moved the seat parts up to a higher slot on the sides so that everyone was a good height for the table.  Dinner was turkey and two types of gravy, pale brown and white, veggies and bread baked by Unca Clint, which was almost as good as cookies baked by Unca Clint.  Almost.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Colin built a fort from his turkey strips, and Caddell placed broccoli guardsmen, and laid in a gravy river.  They were considering adding a bread craig behind it when Lila poked Caddell’s arm.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“If you just play with it, Mama makes you wait for dessert,” she told them, and pointedly bit a carrot in half.  Caddell nodded and Colin stuck the south wall in his mouth, glancing at Laura just in case, trying to see if she’d seen them playing.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was going to be an <em>interesting</em> week.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Morning on the Farm wasn’t like mornings at home.  First of all, Unca Clint didn’t have an alarm clock, he had cats.  They didn’t let anybody sleep after they wanted breakfast, and they were loud .  Secondly, Lila and the Twins went out to the chicken house with Laura before breakfast to get eggs out of the boxes.  Lila got three, Colin found two, and when Laura was busy holding an angry hen, Caddell managed to find four.  Laura put them all in a basket and took them in to help her make french toast.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Laura also didn’t make french toast the same.  She used actual toast that was crunchy, then dipped it in egg goo and fried it.  And she used cinnamon in a fancy shaker to put stars and hearts on it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No smiley faces?” Mam asked.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t like encouraging my children to eat anything that’s emoting,” Laura said.  “Lila’s a biter.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Colin looked at Caddell.  Caddel shrugged.  Adults were strange.  They didn’t mind, the food was tasty and Cooper snuck them extra fried potato strings.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They finished their game with Cooper.  He won, but only because he’d set up a perfect spot on a triple word score for javeaux, and the ten point x on a double letter.  Then Unca Clint passed out cookies for playing a thinking game, and they finished paying back Lila for the first day’s ‘vance.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What’cha doing today?” she asked as she put purple checks by their names green and blue.  Colin looked at Caddell.  Caddell nodded.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We wanna go find a fort spot.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You want another ‘vance?” Lila asked.  The boys conferred.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes please.  Three each again.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>After settling that and getting cookie supplies from Laura, they went for a long run around the big lawn with the dogs.  That was fun and they found a good napping spot in some shade under a bush at the edge of the lawn bit.  With some supplies it would make a good fort.  They went to Unca Clint for supplies, since he was in front of the shed with the stuff, and he was always good about getting things off shelves.  He gave them twine and some rough brown stuff for a tent, and a few short logs for chairs.  They had to make three trips with it all, because Unca Clint really understood the need for a well made fort.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Laura came and found them after they’d laid in the basics, and offered to show them a better knot for draping a tent over their line of borrowed twine.  It was good she wasn’t as mad anymore, she was good with knots.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Welp, that’ll last until after lunch.  We’re having sausage, fruit, and cheese today.  If you help me in the side garden for half an hour, I’ll put together a basket and you can eat out here.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Caddell looked at Colin.  Collin nodded.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What d’ya want us to do?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>&lt;^&gt;</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Laura started easy with them, showing them the little weeds that sprang up on the rows of larger plants, their size marking them for removal.  The boys proved speedy, thorough workers, and before the agreed half hour was up, she moved them to figuring out how to get runners of gill-on-the-ground up out of her lettuce so she could use it to make goat cheese.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>An hour after they started, Laura stopped them and reapplied sunscreen to their faces.  She didn’t know if they’d been wearing any during fort construction, but she’d made them let her put it on them before moving to the garden.  Sun was a real killer, and she knew well enough from Nat that redheads </span>
  <em>
    <span>burn.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Okay, I think that’s enough, so let’s go get you a basket for your lunch.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The twins cheered, and ran ahead of her.  In the kitchen, she opened a tall cabinet and pulled out a smallish wood lunch-pail to pack thick slices of summer sausage and goat cheese wrapped in cheesecloth.  Two apples and a bunch of grapes sat on top, just under the lid.  She checked the latch and handed it to the boys, happy they wanted to eat outside.  Barney had managed to set the stove on fire again trying to make coffee when the coffee maker went out, and was still in town with Clint getting the replacement heating element.  Her kids understood the fact of living in a farmhouse, that sometimes you ate cold food, but they didn’t treat it like an adventure anymore.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sometimes she regretted that.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She plated up sausage and cheese for Cooper, and assembled a cheese-and-fruit kebab for Lila, then went to grab a more liquid refreshment for herself and Ciara.  She was about to open the scotch when her phone rang.  Not the house phone that was in the local phone book, and not the cell that was on the kid’s school records, but the number listed as non-operational and known by only five people.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Barton farm, Laura speaking,” she said into the receiver.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hey Laura,” Clint said casually.  “Is Barney home yet?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Um, no,” she replied, instantly suspicious.  “Isn’t he with you?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Didn’t he call to tell you?  Nat and I got called for an emergency mission, we’re over international waters right now.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Tell Laura I will bring presents for the deti when we get back!” she heard Natasha shout.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Nat said…”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I heard,” Laura interrupted.  “To clarify an earlier point, you left Barney alone in town?  When?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Laura, this mission is super classified,” Clint complained.  “Loose lips sink ships.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Tell me how long you left my husband unsupervised or Nick Fury will wish all I did was sink a few ships.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Two hours, maybe two and a half,” Clint supplied.  “We needed to go by the bank because the hardware store had a problem with the card reader and could only take cash.  I left him outside the door to the hardware store.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You left Barney in town, with enough cash for a new heating element?” she asked.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And a replacement coffee maker, and a fire extinguisher, because it’s not good to go without one and we killed the last one on the stove fire.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Clint,” she said calmly, trying not to scream in frustration.  “The hardware store is directly across from Yertle’s!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Aww futz,” he sighed, seeming to grasp the situation.  “Okay, let me go destabilize a budding dictatorship and I’ll be right back.  Love you Laura!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Clint!”  It was no use, he’d hung up.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Problems?” Ciara asked from the doorway.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Grab the kids, I need to go rescue my husband.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>&lt;^&gt;</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sheriff Graham was well acquainted with most of the trouble that could crop up in town.  He knew all the locals, and the local trouble makers, and usually could head off problems with a slice of pie and a good talking-to.  Of course, some problems were just a little too big for one small-town Sheriff, and Laura Barton was one of them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Now Laura,” he said, hoping he could stop this before any blood got shed.  He wasn’t best pleased by Barney Barton’s habits either, but an angry spouse rampaging through Yertle’s never ended without five arrests.  “I’ve not had a call from in there yet.  Why don’t you take your kids on over to Marian’s and have something to eat, and I’ll go tell Barney you want to talk to him?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Because that talk will end in him convincing you that a man’s got a right to drink, and Tom Bridgman convincing you that the town local needs customers, and Burt Costigan convincing you that I’m a shrew and a harpy who doesn’t treat my man right, and then I’ll be in the same position I am now, but with a longer list of people I’m not happy with,” Laura said patiently.  “I’ve got exactly two nerves left, and Barney has a reserved spot on one of them.  Do you really want a slot on the last?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Graham took a moment to figure out what she’d said, then swallowed.  “Laura, you know when you walk in Yertle’s it ends with the phrase “disturbing the peace”.  And if Barney really has been doing something to warrant your displeasure, well… think of your kids.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I am,” Laura said tartly.  “My kids need to see me stand up to anybody who’s trying to convince me I shouldn’t do what I know to be right.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And just who is gonna watch them if you and your husband are in jail?” Graham asked.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Tha’s what Auntie Ciara’s for,” Lila Barton piped up from her Momma’s hip, cheerful as a sunbeam and just as likely to drive you mad under long exposure.  She twisted to look behind her towards the Jeep Laura drove when she came to town.  “Auntie Ciara, will you play Martian Chess with us later?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Sure honey, but you’ll need to teach me how,” said a woman with short red hair, holding Cooper Barton’s hand as they crossed a street towards Laura Barton.  “Laura, would you like me to flash a badge at this chucklehead, or do you need stress relief?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’ve got it for now, Hon,” Laura said, waving her hand dismissively.  “Graham’s slow, but he’s not stupid.  He knows not to get between a Bonneville woman and what she’s decided to do.  Isn’t that right, Graham?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Laura… I really want to make it to the end of the week without having to call a circuit judge,” Graham pleaded.  He was smarter than a doorpost, so he did know not to make her too mad, the Bonneville girls had always had tempers, but he was really close to a record.  “Please don’t destroy property or kill anybody.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I won’t,” Laura said, then paused.  A horrified look passed over her face and for a second of child-like horror, Graham considered closing his eyes so he wouldn’t have to see what had scared her.  “Ciara… we left the Twins at the farm!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The other woman paled, and Graham thought he saw the family resemblance to Nat Barton when the ruddy glow left her cheeks.  Frankly, Nat Barton probably scared him more than both Barton Brothers put together, even if Barney was liquored up.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’ll start the car, you get the husband,” she said calmly.  “And if this guy gives you trouble, shoot first and we’ll fight over who does paperwork later.  I don’t even want to know what my kids got up to in the hour we left them on the farm alone.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Right then,” Laura said and pushed past Graham.  He followed her, somewhat bewildered, into the bar.  He was too confused to even do much beyond gasp when she climbed onto the bar’s signature turtle racing ring.  “Barnabus Quincy Barton, we have a Code Chartreuse!  Get your good-for-nothing butt back to the farm, or I will let Clint cook your hamburgers for the fourth!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Holy shit!” said someone in the back room.  Graham registered something falling over and the sound of breaking glass, then Barney Barton and five very large men piled out of a smokey doorway.  Laura hopped off the ring and nodded to Graham.  It looked like for once, a Barton household squabble wasn’t going to cost anyone jail time.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>By the end of the day, he would learn to regret his foolhardy optimism.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The fort was a good fort, the Twins agreed.  It was large enough for the two of them to lay out their lunch on the white cloth that had been around the sausage and cheese and have a picnic.  It wasn’t quite large enough for a game, though, and besides, staying in the fort wasn’t much different than staying in the house.  Fortunately, Unca Clint had a REALLY BIG backyard, with lotsa trees.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Unfortunately, their adventuring supplies were low.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>After some discussion, they decided it was okay to take desserts they’d earned, if Laura wasn’t nearby to give them out.  So they swept the front step, fed all the animals, washed the walls of the shed, and pulled up more of the vine-shaped weed Laura said made cheese.  Then they climbed the shelves and got down about-enough chocolate chip cookies and brownies to have earned them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Collin made sure they had chalk for marking paths, and Caddell wrapped up leftover sausage and apples with the desserts in the cloth, and the two took off into the woods.  They drew arrows on rocks and trees to point which way they’d gone, so they could go back the same way, like they did in the vents at the Tri’skellington.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They were deeply engaged in a debate about the best trees for climbing when they heard the sound.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Some men were setting up their own fort in Unca Clint’s backyard.  They were big, and they smelled funny, and most of them had sandpaper-face like Nasty Rumlow.  One of them was singing a song that had words in it the Twins weren’t supposed to use.  Collin did not think Unca Clint invited them.  Caddell thought they should leave.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It didn’t look like they planned on leaving anytime soon, because they had lots of big crates that looked heavy, and only one truck, that already had stuff on it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>So obviously, they had to be made to leave.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Step one was obviously to make it easy for them to leave, because you can’t ask someone to do something and not help them do it.  The truck had rocks by its wheels, and it couldn’t drive over those, so the Twins helped remove them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Step two was to make staying put seem like a bad idea.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That was a little harder, since the twins were really small compared to the rude men.  After some debate, they ran back to the farm and carefully let only two large goats out of the pen before latching it again.  Collin made sure the gate was shut as Caddell told the goats what they wanted.  The goats seemed happy to walk with them to the edge of the woods as long as Caddell kept handing them hay, but goats eat a lot of hay and the handfuls the boys had ran out as they got close to where they’d planned to use a fallen tree to get on the goats and ride them.  Without hay, the goats didn’t seem to want to stand still, and they ran off.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Uh oh,” Caddell said.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We gotta get ‘em back,” Collin agreed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Dogs?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Dogs.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>&lt;^&gt;</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hubert White (pronounced WY-tuh, like the county, not why-TUH like the color) enjoyed going out with his friends in the Militia from time to time.  He liked shooting, and he loved his country, and he wasn’t a fan of having to watch his language all the time as words became supposedly inappropriate.  He wasn’t, as some implied, a bad man, but lately the feeling in town was a little less hospitable to a man who liked to keep things simple, the way they’d been when he was a child.  It wasn’t, for instance, that he objected to any of the Bonneville sisters wearing work clothes and helping out with the farm, he just thought it’d be nice if they put the thought into wearing proper clothes in town.  Likewise, he couldn’t object to Demetrius Freeman running the hardware store, as the man always kept a nice shop, but when he married a white woman, Hubert worried about what the kids’d look like.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Out in the woods with his buddies sometimes seemed the only place he could say such things and not immediately suffer some kind of lecture.  Of course, nature was out close to God, away from the sin of the world of Man, so obviously he’d find peace there.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Or so he thought, until a black goat landed on Mark Dobson right after he finished singing a funny little work song that would have brought him a nasty glare from the busybodies in town.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“AHHH, DEMONS!” Mark screamed.  “I’m sorry Lord, I’ll change my ways!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Calm down,” Gunny Tom scolded.  “It’s just some wild goat, gone climbing trees after the fruits.  You know they do that.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, yeah,” Mark sighed, relaxing visibly.  “But a pure black wild goat?  Just a mite strange, is all.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Maybe it escaped from a farm near here,” Hubert suggested.  “Whose farms back up to these woods?  Anyone keep goats?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Cayson Tolette shook his head.  “Our land’s the closest, but this is basically wild territory.  I wouldn’t know who kept a black goat near here.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The issue was about to be dropped when there was a great baying sound, and a crack like thunder, despite the clear blue sky above the clearing.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Heavenly Father have mercy on us,” Mark prayed.  Hubert looked around at the rest of the Militia.  People were eyeing their weapons, but also each other, not wanting to look weak in front of the others.  Gunny Tom rolled his eyes, but he signalled two of the younger ones to go out and check with the teams on watch.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>&lt;^&gt;</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dixon Calvert wasn’t afraid of much.  Airplanes, public speaking, and the government taking away his guns, pretty much covered the list, and he figured that was a pretty good showing.  He especially didn’t count airplanes as a real fear, per se, since man was not meant to fly or the Lord would have given him wings.  However, he was rapidly concluding he could find it in himself to be afraid of the unholy beast that had been stalking his watch the past five minutes.  The thing was the size of his woodshed, covered in fur so thick he wasn’t sure shooting it wouldn’t just make it mad, and it occasionally let out a high, shrieking ululation at odds with its bulk.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When Sammy Caster’s boy came round to check on them, Dixon grabbed him and dragged him into the safety of the small hollow under the roots of an oak.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>&lt;^&gt;</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Gunny Tom was starting to sweat.   His power in the Militia came from being the one with actual combat experience, nevermind that he was stationed in Germany during ‘Nam and discharged on account of not taking orders from no black devil.  The fact that he’d served was enough, as long as nobody challenged him, and usually the fact he’d served kept folks from challenging him, creating a neat little circle of power begetting more power.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When something challenged that, though, he got a bit nervous, ‘specially since he’d only ever fought in brawls.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Stay calm, men,” he ordered, proud of how steady he kept his own voice as the Hounds of the Devil Himself leapt from the edge of the treeline.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You not supposdta be here,” piped one dog, the one who looked like an unnatural union with a lion was somewhere in his family tree.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Not your land,” agreed a blue-faced demon riding the oversized greyhound with red ears.  Paddy was muttering behind him in that strange gabble Micks used.  Another demon crawled out of the fur of the lion-beast and brandished a tiny sword at him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Leave.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Gunny Tom weighed the options, considered how many times he’d been told his soul was damned, and broke for the truck.  His men protested, but in times of crisis you were only as strong as the weakest link.  The strong would survive.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He was so focused on that, he didn’t pay attention to the blocks having been moved, and instead of backwards up the path, the truck went forwards into the supply tent.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>&lt;^&gt;</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Caddell was feeling a bit chagrined.  He liked that word, he’d learned it from Cooper.  It meant that feeling when something you did didn’t quite do what you meant and everyone made a big deal over it.  Like the rocks by the truck wheels.  They’d moved them so the truck could leave, except instead the truck slid over into a white canvas building and came out the other side covered in sticky brown stuff.  The BadMans ran around in circles trying to figure out what to do, and mostly just got in each others ways.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Which meant they weren’t leaving.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Caddell was about to cry about how unfair it all was when Mam and Laura showed up.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Followed by Unca Barney and a man in silly brown clothes.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Followed by five Really Big men.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And then the adults were shouting at each other and Colin was leading Caddell and the dogs back to the farm, because Caddell had just about had enough of loud adults.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Laura got to the house first, probably because she bailed out before the Jeep had stopped moving.  The front step looked different, cleaner, and the welcome mat was crooked.  A muddy bundle of gill-on-the-ground was on her dining table.  The shed, visible from the kitchen window, was sparkling white up to around three and half feet, where it returned to its usual dusty grey, and the talking knight cookie jar that housed her brownie balls had been disarmed and raided.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“How grounded are my children?” Ciara asked as she set Lila down beside Cooper.  Both children were wide-eyed and pale, looking at the half-wrought devastation.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“All the damage is reversible,” Laura said slowly.  “So it depends on where we find them.  Let’s start at their fort.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The fort led them to goat-and-dog prints, which led into the woods.  The goat pen was latched, but two of her black Don goats were missing.  Given the last time the Twins had felt the need to liberate goats, Ciara had gone back to grab her service pistol just in case, and Barney and Sheriff Graham had been instructed to stay put.  Laura had few hopes for that, but it put Ciara in the lead, at least, and the good Sheriff wasn’t likely to get jumpy with a federal officer leading.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The path through the woods had at least been clearly marked in sidewalk chalk, so Laura pushed the dire fears of lost children to the ‘not as likely’ worry folder of her mind.  Then Ciara pointed out movement and the sound of a truck crashing echoed through the trees.  She hit a dead run and then pulled up short as she looked at the town’s collected malcontents having some kind of mass hysteria over Cayson Tolette’s truck, which was covered in molasses and wrapped around a tree.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What.  Is.  Going.  On.  Here?” Laura bit out.  The men shouted and waved, and pointed guns.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Feck it, I’m getting my kids,” grumbled Ciara.  “Boys, house.  Now.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Laura was fighting down the sinking feeling that she’d have to call the sheriff anyway when he appeared beside Barney, both sweating heavily.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That rifle’s not a hunting gun,” Barney said slowly as he processed the scene.  “And you have the wrong kind of fertilizer in that mix.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What?” the sheriff asked.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That’s an intermediate nutrient mix,” Barney explained.  Laura loved when he actually showed off the big sexy brain he hid behind bad decisions.  “It doesn’t have nitrogen or phosphorus.  That makes it basically useless for the fertilizer bomb they were building.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“B-b-bomb?!?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Everyone began shouting at once.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>&lt;^&gt;</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Burt Costigan was not a man you trifled with.  He was also not a man you ran out on in the middle of a poker game just because your wife called.  So when Barney Barton did just that, he got the entire biker population of Yertle’s bar after him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The Barton farm was a bit out-of-the-way, more a small, self-supported operation than a business.  Sure they sold a bit, especially goat wool and whatever surplus of corn came up, but that was more to change goods to money to buy what they didn’t make.  Burt actually admired that; Laura may have been a bit of a bitch, but she was a self-sufficient bitch who could live off the grid if she needed, and that was worth something.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Also, he thought her sister-in-law was hot.  Nat Barton riding into town on a custom-painted Ural Patrol in matching cherry red leathers was a vision he wouldn’t jeopardize seeing again, so he tried to be nice to Barney.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They parked their bikes a respectful distance from the house when a loud crash sounded and Barney and the Law ran out and sprinted to the tree-line.  Burt grumbled, but waved his men forward.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No, you idjit,” someone said as Billy Cook tried to restart his bike.  “ You wanna start a blood feud?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“But, I… what?” the kid said.  Burt rolled his eyes and hauled the kid off his seat and down the way Barton ran.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You never drive over farmer’s land, it kills the dirt,” he explained.  “It’s the land-man’s version of sugaring a tank.  You wouldn’t sugar a tank, would you?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No!  ‘Course not,” Billy said, shaking his head.  “Thanks for the warning.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They tramped through the underbrush, and got to the clearing as Barney was chastising some assembled skinheads for improper bomb-making.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“SHADDUP!” Burt yelled.  The skinheads quaked, but also quieted.  “Barney, you owe me another round of cards.  But I’ll forgive you, since you’ve got a small traitor infestation.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>One of the men, in an improperly worn uniform, began ranting.  Burt handed his spare knuckle dusters to Rife.  The biker had served honorably as a Marine, and came home half deaf and unable to drive anything with four wheels.  He had a right to the first hit of the fake officer.  Rife laid the man out, and there was more shouting.  “WHADDISAY?” Burt yelled again, silencing the assembled group.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The redhead beside Laura knelt to check the fallen idiot’s pulse, pulled free a small medallion, and scowled.  “I need to call Unca Mick,” she said softly.  Burt liked her voice, the accent was musical and the tone was knife sharp.  “There’s an octopodal infection going around.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fucking cephalopods,” Laura sighed.  “Burt, I know you don’t much like me, but would you mind terribly doing me a favor and tying these trespassers up until the authorities can claim them?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I thought he was the authorities?” Burt asked, pointing to the sheriff.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“He’s the local authorities.  I plan on handing these to federal authorities, because they built bombs near my children , and nothing short of some sort of super classified government black site will keep me from killing them to stop my nightmares.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Honey, this mess wouldn’t explode if you stuffed fireworks in it and lit the whole thing on fire,” Barney soothed.  “It’d barely smolder.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And that’s lovely for you, because you have a history with pyrotechnics and safe explosions and unsafe explosions and the difference between them,” Laura sighed, and Burt saw actual fear on her face for the first time.  “I’m a housewife, and a farmer, and I make damn good booze, but I have never once dealt with anything that was </span>
  <em>
    <span>meant</span>
  </em>
  <span> to explode.  It scares me that it was so close to our family.  We’re supposed to be safe here.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We will be,” Barney promised, hugging her close.  The unexpected vulnerability made Burt blink.  Maybe Laura wasn’t such a bitch after all.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You heard the lady,” he said, snapping fingers at his men.  “Tie ‘em up, and teach ‘em a lesson about dangerous shit near little kids.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Um,” the sheriff started.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I will do all the paperwork,” the redhead promised, “if you just don’t make a scene.  Now, where’s my boys go?  Ah, back that way, through the massive tunnel of underbrush drilled by an Ovcharka.  Obviously.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>&lt;^&gt;</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Clint landed at the family landing site and bailed out of his seat almost as soon as the wheels hit the ground.  Nat smoothly took over post-flight checks, and he once again thanked Fate for having put him in her path, because only someone who longed for family like she did would have known why he was practically teleporting to the side of women who weren’t his sisters in any way except the one that counts.  And only someone who had the training Nat did could have been his calm while they finished a time-critical mission knowing said sisters might be in trouble.  She would need lots of aftercare later, being his calm meant going full arachnid and she was never in a happy headspace after, but that’s what partners were for.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Laura, Ciara!  I finished as fast as I could.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You stink of fish and candy,” Ciara said, pushing his hug towards Laura to dodge.  “What happened?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We did the caterer ruse to access the oligarch, and he had a mutant bodyguard, so I rode the honey-glazed salmon out the second floor juliet balcony window while Nat finished planting the evidence.  I’m sorry I didn’t bring treats, we rushed to get home.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I forgive you and the boys are in time out for failure to consult an adult before hunting militant extremists in the woods on dog-back.”  Ciara sighed and squeezed the less-sticky parts of his arms in a substitute hug.  “Unca Mick is sending some cleaners and a few transports to haul off the rest of your infestation.  I’m glad you’re okay, Clint.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Of course,” Natasha said from behind him.  “I will not let my partner be compromised.  Now, Clint, you should wash.  I will play with the detki.  Ciara can handle Fury and his people.  Laura-”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Will be rewarding my husband for bringing home a suitable amount of muscle to handle the homegrown idiots and also for knowing what fertilizers are mostly not dangerous to mix with molasses,” Laura interrupted.  Nat looked blankly at her. Laura sighed and translated into the one language Nat never lost in the calm, still, deadly place in her heart: pop-culture references.  “We’ll be in our bunk.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ah, good,” Nat agreed, a touch of color coming back into her cheeks as she steered them into the house.  As Clint let her shove him into the bathroom, he heard the appreciative hum of Burt, and looked over to see three bikers in full leathers losing at Martian Chess to Lila, currently in a Rapunzel dress complete with a frying pan by her hand.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m not asking,” Clint said, locking eyes with Burt.  He didn’t care for the guy, but he didn’t want to jeopardize Lila’s chess hustle with a scene.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Thanks,” Burt grunted.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Touching, now bathe,” Natasha snapped at him, pushing harder.  She wasn’t trying to upend him or he wouldn’t be standing, but she was insistent.  “You have scales in your hair.  It is disgusting.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A shower made him feel more human, and the extra time with Lila and Cooper returned most of the life to Nat’s face, although Clint didn’t really relax until she snapped at Burt to ‘take a picture, it’ll last longer.’  Fury’s people came and went with almost no visible interference, and Laura and Barney emerged in time to insist that Burt and his people stay for dinner.  Dinner itself was barbeque cooked outside while Clint and Barney fixed the stove, and a big murder salad.  Burt looked about as sour when given the salad as Lila was about being offered mustard on her hot dog, but Nat gave the bikers a glare and pointedly bit a stick of beet in half.  After that, there were no complaints about her cooking.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So, that was a big day,” Laura remarked tiredly as the men around her gathered plates and cups to take in.  “What’s say we pull out the projector and have a drive-in night?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Monsters!” Lila shouted.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>"Lilo and Stitch?  Monsters Inc?" Clint asked, trying to confirm which of several movies she might want with monster main characters.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t want to watch a cartoon, what about E.T.?” Cooper suggested.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh, or Home Alone,” Barney offered.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No,” Ciara said firmly.  “The boys are not allowed to watch that yet.  You know what they’re capable of.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Princess Bride,” Natsha said quietly.  Suddenly everyone in the family was looking at her and remembering it had been a bad mission.  “We will watch Princess Bride, and I will eat Milk Duds and popcorn.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Okay, Nat,” Clint said firmly.  “Princess Bride and movie snacks it is.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Is that a girl movie?” Billy Cook asked Cooper quietly.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No, it has sword fights and monsters and a prince who’s a real jerk,” Cooper said, “so it’s an everyone movie.  You’ll like it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Okay, settle down,” Laura called as she finished plugging in the movie projector protected by the barn so it shone on the white wall of the house.  “Ten minute warning for snacks and bathrooms!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Make me the popcorn with the lemon dust,” Nat ordered Clint.  He laughed, only Nat liked the lemon-extract salt on popcorn.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“As you wish.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><hr/>
<h3>
  <span>Notes:</span>
</h3>
<p>
  <span>(no, I <em>realllly</em> ran out of space at the bottom.)</span>
</p>
<p>At this point Lila is about two and attending half-day daycare. If Laura can't come out to pick her up at noon because Clint is landing the plane and has requested to be met, then Lila doesn't go that day and Laura has four extra hours of very active toddler on a farm.</p>
<p>Laura's been learning Russian since Clint finally brought Nat home, and she knows the word for goat, but not goat-kid. They're close enough to guess though.</p>
<p>Laura's version of "the good stuff" is moonshine, which she makes in a small-batch bathtub still. The flavors are all in code based on songs with 'moon' in them, another holdover from family moonshiners in Prohibition. That's Amore is a play on "when the moon hits your eye like a big piece of pie, that's amore". (I'm aware that's the wrong lyric, but Laura's people are simple people.)</p>
<p>The front forty is a term from the Homestead Acts. Farmers were granted a quarter section (160 acres) and the quarter section was itself subdivided into four quarter-quarter sections of 40 acres each: two front forty and two back forty. Modern small farms don't always have all 160 acres as crops, the Barton farmstead has one front forty of crops, one front forty of livestock, and the back sections are mostly to hide the landing pad and all the other stuff Clint needs to feel safe.</p>
<p>Laura uses labor as a love language and also as her preferred form of repairing a broken trust. Clint did cross a line with the critters, but he knows it and she gives him something she knows he can do as a way to say sorry in a material way. The end bedroom looks like this.</p>
<p>Clint tries not to swear where his niece and nephew can hear, and Cooper doesn't go to bed as early as Lila, but he's still sort of in Specialist Mode, where swearing is okay.</p>
<p>Clint will talk about Laura, Cooper, and Lila with fellow agents, but he's really secretive about where they live unless it's a fellow HERO agent and he's taken precautions. He goes to Ciara's house, not her desk, because it's more secure.</p>
<p>Laura Barton has a special way of handling problems, one that arose from a unique family and marrying into a family that contains Clint Barton. Also, her children all got the Barton Nose For Trouble, so she's seen most everything.</p>
<p>Alcoholism and addiction are touchy topics that I will try to address with respect and dignity, but suffice it to say the Barton Brothers don't have a standard set of backgrounds for their problem. There's a genetic component that they have, which is common, and a certain amount of both post-traumatic and prolonged-duration stress disorders in there too (which can also be common) but most alcoholics didn't get there via underfunded circus medicine and the Barton Bros grew up self-medicating. Barney isn't good at coping without alcohol, because if he has to, he'll go into town and drink until the barkeep cuts him off or he runs out of money. He prefers to drink at home to get over the barrier to talking about his issues with Laura, but she likes to make sure it doesn't become casual. If you or a loved one is having problems with alcohol, please contact a support program for guidance. My family has used AA, but soberrecovery.com has been recommended as having some ideas for other options. And of course, most psychiatric facilities either can or can refer you to somewhere that can help with detox or the underlying whys of addiction.</p>
<p>Lila is 2 and a half, the boys are almost three, but they're all exceptionally bright kids. Their language is developed a bit faster than you usually see at 3 (the standard is full sentences of up to 6 words), but the ability to write is only advanced in the boys, Lila's about spot on, being able to do her name and 0-9.<br/>
One of Barney's vices in the comics is gambling, which has gotten him on the wrong end of loan sharks. In this story, he mainly tells Lila things like that so she won't fall for it, but Lila is her mother's daughter and makes everything a tool in her toolbox.<br/>
Lila has a special jar of cookies her mom puts the ones she's earned in, so she won't scarf them down as she earns them, because she tends to get upset stomachs. As a result, she has superb skills at delayed gratification for a two year old.<br/>
Goats do climb well, and tend to like rooftops. Five feet is the recommended height for non-electric fencing of active breeds of goat, and high tensile wire is ideal, because while goats won't eat metal a la cartoons, they will use their mouths to explore and their teeth are like tinsnips. They're also well known for learning to open simple latches with their lips and tongues.<br/>
The twins are able to keep up with Cooper because of two things. One, they spend some of their free time at SHIELD hanging out with the translation team being fed a steady diet of foreign language, and two, they have the Urquhart gift of rapid language learning. </p>
<p>Farm cats are a good wake-up system, better than roosters, especially since usually they only try to wake the adults (those most likely to feed them). The Barton cats are mixes of Maine Coon, American Shorthair, and Siamese, so they are large, muscular, and loud. Hence waking anyone not super adjusted to them.</p>
<p>There are different opinions out there about smiley-faces on food, but I personally hold Laura's position, that it's strange to want to eat food that looks like it might be sentient. I like meat as much as the next gal, but I don't like eating anything that's currently got a face as it sits on my plate.</p>
<p>Clint gives the boys burlap for their tent, since it's a common farm supply and also reasonably sturdy for childhood building projects.</p>
<p>Learning weeding starts with "if it's tiny and around big things, it's a weed" and moves to "if it has these leaves/vines/buds, it's a weed" before ever hitting understanding why things might be weeds. Some weeds are actually useful as long as you don't let them choke out other plants. Gill-on-the-ground is one, and it's useful for brewing beer and making cheese without animal rennet.</p>
<p>Pale skin and red hair tend to be indicators of a tendency to get really bad sunburns, and Laura knows the general dangers of sun exposure, because she works a farm.</p>
<p>The phrase "Loose lips sink ships" has been used in wartime to emphasize that even small things can be damaging if in enemy hands. Stuff like how long it's been since he was in town and being over international waters can add up into classified information.</p>
<p>Graham is a good guy, really, he's just stuck in a small town mindset and used to keeping everyone happy. Unfortunately, that mindset means he's easily persuaded to let people keep making bad choices until they break the law, and he's unlikely to want to let anyone disrupt the status quo.</p>
<p>This is set before Nat and Clint hooked up, but because of having partial information, Sheriff Graham thinks Nat is Clint and Barney's sister, hence 'Nat Barton'. Ciara and Nat are both redheads, so he's also just filed Ciara as a Barton sister, too.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>The twins have not got a huge catalog of racial epithets individually, but with their Urquhart Gift on language, slurs all kind of translate to 'vague bad word for Other' and they know that's not nice to say. They also have a pretty good feel for when people aren't supposed to be doing as they are.<br/>The dogs discussed are the Ovcharka (Caucasian Shepard) and the Borzoi (Russian Wolfhound) rescued from Irkutsuk. Both are large enough for small boys to ride them.<br/>In Tennessee, White County is pronounced WY-tuh. Hubert is actually a transplant to Virginia from that county and is quite proud of that.<br/>Most people would prefer not to think of themselves as bad people. So when otherwise normal, nice individuals do racist/sexist/ablist things, they rationalize it. The worst level of this is dehumanizing the victim population to allow for something like slavery or genocide in an otherwise sane person's worldview, but the men here show a range, as is usual for prejudiced groups, since even jerks are not a monolith. Hubert is on the shallow end, he doesn't like change and he started in a world where ladies wore stockings and black folks kept their eyes down when white people passed. Gunny Tom is closer to the rationalizations of slave-holders, holding on to the idea that he, as a white man of English descent, is superior to non-whites, non-males, and people of non-Anglo origin.</p>
<p>You'll notice a number of religious references among the Militia, due to the common co-opting of religion by hate-groups, militant isolationists, and other gatherings of violent anti-social sorts. That's not to say any religion used as such holds those beliefs itself, it's just that Faith is a good gateway to Belief, and Belief is a target for the founders of such groups.<br/>Wild goats are usually not as big nor as willing to go near people as domestic wool-goats. The goats freed are Don goats with a little bit of Altai mountain goat. Both are big, sturdy, thick-coated breeds with very large and pointed horns. They look quite sinister.<br/>The Borzoi has red ears, like the Hounds of the Wild Hunt. Paddy (not his real name, but a common nickname for Irish men) has problems with tiny blue people on red eared dogs calling him out for trespassing for Very Different Reasons than Tom, but Tom lacks the cultural sensitivity or concern to know why.<br/>The Strong Survive is a lovely bit of self-defeating advice that apocalypse preppers and militant anarchists tend to propagate, which betrays them because humanity is a pack-building species and we need each other.<br/>The Twins perspective last chapter covers having done chores as though they did them fully and correctly, but in this chapter we get to see that the Twins idea of a chore being "done" and an adults are not the same. Because they're kids, and have small bodies, short attention spans, and a lack of anything resembling impulse control.<br/>The last time the twins freed a goat was the Irkutsuk Incident, which ended... badly. Not dissimilar to this incident, actually.<br/>Barney isn't a genius like Tony, but he's also not an idiot. Like Clint he's very good at practical applications of science, only his runs to things-what-blow-up rather than angles to shoot and wind resistance. This is part of why Laura was enticed to marry him and make babies, because brains are sexy.<br/>Fertilizer bombs use a mix of things to blow up, but mostly what they need is nitrogen or phosphorus, neither of which is in an intermediate fertilizer mix.<br/>Nat drives an Ural Patrol, a Russian motorcycle with a sidecar for passengers or carrying gifts for her godkids. It's cherry red with white and black accents and matches her red leather gloves, pants, and jacket which she wears to ride, as well as working with her Star Wars helmet.<br/>Burt Costigan inherited the pirate soul, equating freedom with not being tied down or beholden, so he tends to use some nautical turns of phrase, like calling those who live stationary lives "land-men" and distrusting the authority of nations. However, he is a family-oriented guy and believes in protecting those who cannot protect themselves. His gang has a number of people with disabilities and/or other variances that make life in society hard.<br/>Martian Chess is a four-person version of Chess made by Loony Labs using their pyramid pieces.<br/>Murder salad is salad made by chopping up veggies with a big knife. It is so named because if Nat gets to use the big knife, she does not murder her postman.<br/>"As you wish" was how the main male character of Princess Bride told the main female character he loved her.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0018"><h2>18. Of Two Things Beware:</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Gifts From Scientists, and the "Good Ideas" of Small Children</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I slipped and spilled plot everywhere. SorryNotsorry.<br/>(WARNING: Goes right from hilarity to angst in 3.5 seconds.)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>(As if to make up for last chapter, there are no end notes on this one. Just the work end notes. And yes, it IS now the end of this work. More twins-tales and other short stories will be back after the next main work is posted.)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Fury walked into his office a bit late for the day and immediately stopped.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Jackson, get me Hill on the line.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sitting on his desk were three bottles of SciDiv’s special edition Scotchgard, and a bottle of blue label, single malt Scotch. SciDiv does like their puns. And fully half of them had just taken vacation time.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hill’s on line one, sir.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Fury picked up his phone. “Hill. SciDiv either has given the twins a new toy, or is about to. I’ve been given 3 bottles of their version of Scotchgard, so probably another paint-based weapon. They also gave me scotch.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I understand, sir. Should I warn Coulson?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No, bastard’s still smirking about them getting my office phone in the last raid. Let him find out about it the hard way, whatever it is.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He could hear the glee in Hill’s voice, “Yes, sir.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>As the Harrows Duty agents were all out on missions, fishing the twins out of trouble was supposed to be STRIKE’s job.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Which, of course, </span>
  <em>
    <span>completely explained</span>
  </em>
  <span> why they were in Shikoba’s office, holding a guinea pig with a neon pink stripe running down its back.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>No, it really didn’t.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Taking a deep breath and asking the Powers That Be for sanity, Shikoba asked, “Alright, explain again, why are you in my office?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hiding.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“From whom?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Rollins.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Because?”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well…”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We were playing wif the new paint marbles we were given…”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And then we saw ‘Genta here stuck in our net trap, so we went to untangle her.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Only while we were doin that, Rollins came in an’ stepped on the marbles.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And the paint wen’ up his pantleg.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And he slipped.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And landed on more of the marbles.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And got paint in his eyes.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And triggered the net trap.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And started saying a lot of words we’re not allowed to say.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So we’re hiding.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Only Ronnie is in London.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“An’ Melly is in China.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“An’ Unca Phil is in… Somethin with a Y.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And…”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Shikoba interrupted the back-and-forth, “Alright! I get it, all your usual hiding offices are empty of their agents. Why ME?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You is nice.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“An NatMonster likes you, which means you is safe.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And you glared down DummyWard last week when he was saying bad things about agents who are ladies.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Which means you are scary, of the good kind.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Shikoba’s head hit their desk.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Coulson sighed and stared hard at the scientist in front of him. “Just how many of these paint bomb marbles were given to the twins?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well, I don’t know, sir, I wasn’t on that project and all the Engineering scientists who </span>
  <em>
    <span>were,</span>
  </em>
  <span> are on vacation.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“An estimate will do, Barkley.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Only 20 or thirty…”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Coulson breathed a sigh of relief….</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Thousand.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Too soon.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Coulson turned and left, maybe he should take the rest of the day off…at a bar.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Auntie Laura’s house was the Best House, with lots of nooks and crannies to explore, lots of yard to play in, lots of animals just about everywhere, including their rescued goat, hen, and the dogs that adopted them. This did not, however, mean the boys did not get bored, just that they were never very bored for very long. So when, on the third day there, they happened to get bored, they simply went looking for something to do.</span>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>What they found was a box lid, chopsticks, and Uncle Barney. Gathering up the lid and chopsticks, they dug out of their suitcases a glass marble and 15 paint bombs, one of which even happened to be black, then went to get Barney to play with them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He had said he was good at playing pool, after all.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Barney said yes.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He had no idea what he was getting into.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It took a minute or two to set up, making pockets out of dixie cups, and setting the whole up on the kids’ craft table. Then making a racking triangle out of pipe cleaners and straws.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Then, full of amusement, he let Colin break. Which was the last time nothing went wrong.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He took a shot, got paint in his eyes, to which the boys yelled in unison “SCRATCH!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Caddell took a shot. Barney got paint in his mouth, to which the boys announced, “Point!” and Caddell took another shot.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Barney dodged the paint and began to play their game in earnest. He used every skill he had from hustling.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He got paint in his hair.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He got paint in his shoes.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He got paint on his hands.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>On his shirt.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>On his pants.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>On the wall.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>On Laura’s Grandma’s vase.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And then Laura came home...</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>To two boys only slightly splattered and pointing at Barney, who pointed back at them, as Laura looked around her living room in something akin to horror. Silently, she turned around and walked right back out.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Thirty seconds felt like forever. Finally, Barney spoke. “We’re doomed.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Laura walked back in another 30 seconds later, only to breathe deeply, and walk back out again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A full minute later, the door opened slowly; Ciara didn’t even step into the room, nor let go of the door. She took one look at three hangdog faces, on three boys (one overgrown) standing meekly by the source of the mess, and two looks at the room, before she, too, closed the door and walked away.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yup,” said Caddell.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We’re doomed,” Colin finished.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Laura did not come back in. Ciara did not come back in.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Half an hour later, Clint and Coulson stood in the doorway. All three had clearly been trying to clean, but were still splattered with paint themselves, and so had left smudges as they cleaned. Colin had been crying, Caddell looked like he was going to be sick. Barney looked about ready to keel over.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Okay, Little Monsters,” Coulson said with a comforting smile.  “Let’s get cleaned up while Unca Clint shows the Big Mess Monster how to use my special bottle of cleaner on the house.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Bro, you have the worst critical thinking skills, and the best luck,” Clint teased as Phil ushered the boys to the adjacent bathroom.  “Laura wanted this room painted soon anyway, and she sent lemonade with me to keep everyone from freaking out while she works out some stress on the speed bag in the barn.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Collin and Caddell morosely followed Coulson to the bathroom, but at least Caddell didn’t look quite so near to puking.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We really are sorry, Unca Clint.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We know, but you still have to clean up messes you make. Some messes are harder to fix than others.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Umm,” Barney began, looking at Clint.  “Most strong cleaners are going to eat the boys' hands raw in very little time, and no gloves will fit them.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Maybe you should have thought of that before you kept playing after the paint was splattered the first time,” Clint said, “it would have saved you from wall-washing and floor-mopping duty.  Once the boys are clean, they can move the small stuff away from where you’re working.  Also, you really think the geniuses who make these things don’t also make lab safety gear for them?  I have a box of neoprene gloves in their size. Also, goggles and masks. SciDiv keeps hoping to bribe them to the darkside.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Barney snorted as he began to scrub at the wall, “Those two? In a lab?” He thought for a moment, “Maybe once in awhile, but not all day, much less every day.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Coulson wiped carefully at the dried-on paint that splattered Caddell’s face, horrifyingly in red. “You’re in trouble, but only until the mess gets cleaned up, not for forever.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“But it’s a biiiig mess! What if we can’t clean it up?” Colin sniffled.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You will, and you’ll have help.”  Coulson sighed.  “Ask Auntie Tasha if I believe in messes too big to be cleaned up.  She’ll tell you I don’t.  No matter how much red you’ve gotten on things.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Caddell asked softly, “Can we go tell Auntie Laura we’re sorry before we go back to cleaning, please?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We’ll see,” Coulson answered softly, pausing for a moment to think of how to explain. “Remember, two weeks ago, how angry you were when your mom took away the lockpicks SciDiv gave you?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Both boys nodded slowly.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And it took you a long time to calm down enough to talk?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They nodded faster this time, beginning to see what he was getting at.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Did you stop loving your mom?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No,” Caddell started. “We always love Mam,” Colin finished.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Did loving mom stop you from being mad?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No,” Colin said.  “We were still upset.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Auntie Laura is upset that her things got splattered with paint. She may still need time to calm herself down, but that doesn’t mean she’s stopped caring for you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh."</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Can we see NatMonster, and ask her to tell Auntie Laura we wanted to say sorry?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Phil smiled. “I think that’s a very good idea,” he said before returning to cleaning off the paint. Their hair would have to wait for a bath, but their faces and hands could get clean now, and if he took them to Nat in the kitchen, he could get oil worked into their hair so the paint would come out easily at bathtime.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ciara and Nat were in the kitchen. Nat was making treats for Clint and Coulson. Ciara was idly making random things into bombs while chatting with Nat. At least it wasn’t the only remote that worked with the TV, this time. (She’d done that to her own on accident. Twice. She wasn’t allowed to watch Wheel of Fortune anymore.)</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When Coulson knocked on the doorframe, they turned to see him with two very pale looking little boys.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“They asked to apologize.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Colin and Caddell moved in for hugs, Colin to his NatMonster, Caddell to Mama.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We ARE sorry, Mam,” Caddell insisted quietly.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We didn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>mean</span>
  </em>
  <span> to make a mess of Auntie Laura’s house,” Colin added.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I understand that,” Ciara answered, “And Auntie Laura does too, but you need to </span>
  <em>
    <span>think</span>
  </em>
  <span> about what the consequences will be </span>
  <em>
    <span>before</span>
  </em>
  <span> you do something, it may hurt someone you don’t intend.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“NatMonster?” Caddell asked from  Ciara’s shoulder, “Unca Phil said to ask you if he believes in messes too big to be cleaned up.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Nat looked at the red paint in Caddell’s hair, and knew he’d had red on his face too, before Phil cleaned him up, knew exactly what had gone through Phil’s mind. She remembered only too well Phil cleaning red off of her own face after her first Black Widow day with SHIELD, as she worried about the red in her ledger. “No, buachailli, Phil doesn’t. No matter how big a mess you make, Unca Phil will always help clean it up, because it always </span>
  <em>
    <span>can</span>
  </em>
  <span> be, even if you can’t do it on your own.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Caddell and Colin went back to cleaning with Coulson’s help while Barney went to get the worst of the paint off of himself. Clint disappeared into the workshop shed with a block of cedar.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>By the time the living room was clean, Laura was back in the Kitchen from the barn, and the smells of cookies and brownies, and rum ball brownies drifted through the house, and shortly the kitchen table was crowded with 6 adults and 4 children happily devouring desserts. When everyone finished, Clint revealed what he’d been working on.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>3 hours later…</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Cheese, WHY is Laura Barton on the other line complaining about the Barton boys AND the Harrow twins?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Clint made a mini pool set, and Barney taught the twins to hustle.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“...WHY?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Because they successfully hustled Barney at paintball pool and made a mess of Laura’s living room while they were at it. So Clint made wooden mini pool so her living room wouldn’t get splattered with paint again, and Barney taught them how to really hustle with regular pool.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Why did you not stop Barney?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ciara laughed and said, and I quote; ‘they will need money for college, might as well have skills early.’ Honestly, if we ARE going to recruit them as soon as they’re legal, especially if they go undercover, it’d be a useful skill to have.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I can always send you to the Sandbox.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m aware, sir.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m having Jackson set up a college fund for them, and diverting SciDiv’s penalty fines for unauthorized Twins’ Gifts into it. No more need to teach them the Con Arts."</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Okay, folks!  That's it for the side stories for now.  The current schedule (subject to life, as always) has the next work, the Bodies in Space Director's Cut, up sometime before Valentines.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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